It seems that for as long as we’ve been a family, Buzz Lightyear and Woody have lived in our house.
My sons are now almost twenty-seven and twenty-five years old, and for every one of those years, there has been a Toy Story character somewhere under our roof. At various times, Buzz flew from the ceiling, Woody stood guard on a shelf, Jessie disappeared into a toy box, and Rex found his way into closets and under beds. Today, they’re packed away in storage with so many other reminders of our family’s experiences during our sons’ childhoods, but they are still part of our family story.
We sang the songs until we knew every word by heart. We wore out VHS tapes before replacing them with DVDs, only to stream the movies years later when that technology came along. Every new release meant a trip to the theater, and somewhere along the way, my boys stopped simply watching Toy Story and started living it. They dressed up as Woody and Buzz, but more importantly, they spent countless afternoons creating adventures that existed nowhere except in their own imaginations.
So it seemed only natural that Bonnie and I went to see Toy Story 5.
Two people in their sixties showing up for the latest Toy Story movie by themselves might have looked a little out of place, but our youngest son, Bradley, happened to be in town celebrating Father’s Day a few days early. At almost twenty-five years old, he hardly needed an excuse to go to the movies with his parents, but somehow having him there made the evening feel familiar. Really, we felt we needed our kids with us to go see the movie. For a couple of hours, it felt less like revisiting a movie franchise and more like revisiting a chapter of our lives. A chapter that seemed to have passed in the snap of Thanos’ fingers, a chapter I would gladly revisit, relive if only given the chance.
Pixar has always understood that Toy Story was never really about toys. Every installment has been a reminder that children grow up while parents struggle to understand how it happened so quickly. This latest movie tells that story again, but it wraps it inside a question that feels particularly relevant today.
What happens when the age of toys gives way to the age of technology?
The movie paints a world where traditional toys are pushed aside because they cannot compete with glowing screens and endless digital entertainment. Children gather in the same room but retreat into separate digital experiences. They are connected to everyone and, at the same time, strangely disconnected from the people sitting beside them.
Watching those scenes, I couldn’t help thinking that Pixar wasn’t really talking about toys at all.
It was asking what children lose when imagination is replaced by consumption.
When my boys dumped a pile of toys onto the bedroom floor, they weren’t looking for instructions. They were looking for possibilities. Woody might begin the afternoon as the cowboy everyone recognized from the movie, but before long, he could just as easily become the sheriff or even the outlaw if that made for a better story. Rex alternated between hero and villain depending on what the adventure required. A blanket draped across two chairs became a fortress until someone decided it was a cave, and later that same afternoon, it might become a spaceship heading toward some distant galaxy.
Looking back, I realize the toys themselves weren’t doing very much.
Their value wasn’t in what they were.
Their value was in what they required the child to contribute.
Every story demanded imagination. Every disagreement forced negotiation. Every new adventure required creativity and collaboration. The toys supplied the starting point, but the children supplied everything else.
That memory stayed with me long after the movie ended because I wonder if we sometimes confuse digital interaction with human interaction.
Technology allows children to communicate with friends across continents, and that’s remarkable. But if two children sitting next to each other choose to communicate through devices instead of directly with one another, have we gained something or surrendered something? If every relationship is mediated through a screen, every conversation filtered through a keyboard, every shared experience viewed through a display, what happens to the subtle skills that only develop when people learn to read faces, emotions, awkward silences, laughter and disappointment in real time?
I don’t pretend to know the answer, but I think the question is worth asking.
This isn’t an argument against technology any more than it is an argument against progress. I’ve spent much of my professional life embracing innovation, and I believe AI will become one of the most important tools humanity has ever created. Used well, it can expand creativity rather than diminish it. It can help us write, design, build, discover, and imagine things that would otherwise remain beyond our reach.
The distinction, at least to me, is not between toys and technology.
It is between passive consumption and active creation.
There is an enormous difference between using AI to explore an idea and asking AI to do all of the thinking for you. There is a difference between creating with technology and simply consuming whatever an algorithm decides should hold your attention for the next few minutes. One asks something of us. The other asks only that we keep scrolling.
Perhaps that explains why governments in places like the United Kingdom have begun reconsidering how much time young people should spend on social media. Whether those policies ultimately prove effective is almost beside the point. They reflect a growing sense that childhood needs room for boredom, imagination, physical play and face-to-face relationships because those experiences shape the adults children eventually become.
Adults should probably pay attention to the same lesson.
I’ve lost count of the evenings when the television is on in our house, and no one could tell you what was happening because everyone is busy looking at a different screen. We once joked that television was the boob tube because it captured our attention for hours at a time. Compared with today’s endless feeds, it almost seems quaint.
The scene that stayed with me most from Toy Story 5 wasn’t the conflict between old toys and new technology.
It was Jessie.
She believes she has been forgotten because the little girl who once loved her has grown up and moved on. Then she discovers that years earlier, her first owner, who grew up and left her behind under an old oak tree, had left an old lunchbox for her own daughter to find under that same tree. The daughter of the girl, her first owner, whose name is Jessie, was named after the toy that had become such an important part of her mother’s childhood.
That moment quietly reveals what Toy Story has been saying all along.
The toys were never the point.
The imagination they inspired was.
Children grow up. Toys end up in closets, attics and storage boxes. Technology evolves from VHS to DVD to streaming and, soon enough, to whatever comes next. The objects change, but the imagination they nurture can survive for generations if we allow it to.
As AI becomes part of everyday life, I hope we remember that the goal isn’t to choose between toys and technology. The goal is to make sure the next generation continues to imagine, create, invent and play rather than simply consume. The best technology should do what the best toys have always done: Give us a starting point and challenge us to build the rest ourselves.
Buzz Lightyear promised to take us to infinity and beyond.
Artificial intelligence promises to take us somewhere even farther.
I hope that wherever we go, we never leave behind the simple act of two children sitting on the floor, making up a story that no one else could have imagined, and discovering that the greatest technology they will ever possess is still the one they were born with: The human imagination.
