The fifth film turns the arrival of a children’s tablet into a warning about the world that created the “iPad Kid.”
Toy Story film series has always understood that toys matter because children give them life. The newest chapter reverses that compact: what happens when a glowing screen asks for the child’s complete attention and the old companions are left staring from the floor? Sociologist Aarushi Bhandari sees more than a movie plot. She sees a moral tale about technology, exhausted parents and a society that has allowed a tablet to become the village.
GUEST BLOG / By Aarushi Bhandari, Davidson College Originally published by The Conversation-- In the trailer for “Toy Story 5,” a little girl named Bonnie is playing with her toys when a package arrives in the mail.
She opens it to find Lilypad, a tablet for children.
The iconic toys from the series—Woody, Buzz Lightyear, the Potato Heads, Forky and Slinky Dog—watch in dismay as Bonnie casts them all aside in favor of the bright tablet screen. Rex the dinosaur exclaims, “What? Extinction? Not again!”
The film zeros in on a uniquely 21st-century phenomenon: the “iPad kid,” a term used—often disparagingly—to describe a generation of children who grew up enchanted by screens.
A lot of the discussion around tablet use among kids shames parents, framing it as an example of lazy or bad parenting. Yet factors such as long working hours and lack of access to affordable childcare compel many parents to rely on tablets.
"As a scholar of the attention economy—and also as a mom to a 4-year-old—I’ve noticed a disconnect between the resources U.S. society offers parents and what’s expected of them in the digital age," points out article author Bhandari.
THE PANDEMIC AND THE “SQUARE AU PAIR”
When the first “Toy Story” came out in 1995, many single-income families could still afford to comfortably raise multiple children. It was more common for new parents to live near extended family members, such as grandparents, who could provide childcare support. Federal policies provided some low-income families with cash assistance that helped ease the transition to parenthood.
Since then, parenting has become much more challenging. Single-income households with children under 18 have steadily declined as wages have stagnated, forcing both parents into the workforce. At the same time, it has become harder to qualify for government benefits.
Even when mothers earn a paycheck, working moms experience what sociologists call the “motherhood penalty”—career disadvantages, including lower wages and barriers to promotion following childbirth—even as U.S. parental-leave policies remain weak.
So it is hardly surprising that fewer Americans are choosing to become parents under these conditions. Those who did have children in the years leading up to 2020 then ran directly into the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lockdowns that began in March 2020 closed schools and many workplaces. Some parents worked from home; others continued essential work in grocery stores, hospitals and elsewhere. Children stayed home as schools shifted to remote learning.
It is important to remember that institutions with social legitimacy and authority encouraged tablet use during the pandemic. School systems around the world normalized screens for remote learning. Children as young as four were given tablets, allowing parents space to complete their own work and household tasks. Some mothers called the device “the square au pair.”
In this sense, the tablet became a form of school-sanctioned childcare. Economic activity was minimally disrupted. Productivity hummed along. And the kids? Comfortably distracted.
FOR SOME HOUSEHOLDS, THERE IS LITTLE CHOICE
When lockdowns ended, tablets remained integrated into the education system. In 2021, four in five U.S. households with children had a tablet. Beyond schoolwork, children also use tablets for video games and television.
The adverse effects of excessive screen time have been documented for decades, but scholars have only recently begun to unpack the specific harms of interactive tablet use among young children.
Children who use tablets are more likely to experience emotional dysregulation and dependence on screens. Researchers have also found tablet use among children to be significantly associated with ADHD diagnoses.
At the same time, screen use among children is tied to social class. Parents in working- and middle-class households are more likely to rely on screens than high-income parents who can hire childcare services such as full-time nannies.
Parental education is another factor. Americans generally have little grasp of digital hygiene—the best practices that can minimize the negative effects of screens. Households in which parents did not graduate from college are even less likely to receive useful guidance.
While schools hand out tablets, most fail to provide students and families with comprehensive education about the adverse effects of excessive screen time.
In other words, this is not merely a Generation Alpha problem. Most people—adults included, with or without children—are not properly educated about their choices around technology. Yet adults continue to be shamed if they hand a child a tablet, even while parents bear the burden of challenging an educational system that has normalized those same devices.
FRANKENSTEIN’S VILLAGE
When work is the only sturdy pillar in a society where government benefits for low-income people, family ties and community institutions have eroded, tablets replace the metaphorical village—the web of social support that helps families thrive.
In pursuit of jobs or affordable housing, many young parents move farther from their extended families and the communities where they grew up. Working parents forced to rely on daycare—sometimes for children only a few weeks old—spend an exorbitant amount for the service.
Some have no alternative but to send infants to expensive daycare centers often staffed by underpaid workers who are mothers themselves.
Meanwhile, traditional gender roles ensure that many mothers still go home to a second shift. Working women continue to perform a disproportionate share of cooking, cleaning and childcare. No matter how overworked or exhausted some parents are, they cannot afford help as inflation and the cost of living remain high.
Big Tech takes advantage of this crisis with a “solution” that ultimately treats children as products, manipulating their emotions and mining their data. As I argue in my book, “Attention and Alienation,” children’s dependence on screens is a key component of the attention economy.
The earlier a life is monetized, the longer it is profitable.
“Toy Story 5” and its critical view of the tablet may be helpful. But it will take more than a blockbuster movie to protect small children from the harms of too much screen time. It will require strong parental-leave policies, expansive and affordable childcare, fair wages and shared household labor.
In other words, there needs to be a full rehabilitation of the village.
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About the author: Aarushi Bhandari is an assistant professor of sociology at Davidson College. The original article appeared in TheConversation.com
Illustration: AI was instructed by the blog to create the posted image in the style of the late Sidney Paget, a gifted Brit illustrator of the early 20th century.
