The news that Toy Story 5 will confront screen addiction has landed with the force of a closing factory door. Tom Hanks, the voice of Woody, has warned that the issue is a ‘terror’ for British families. For millions of parents across the North, this is not a film plot. It is the kitchen table argument they live every day.
Hanks, speaking at a preview event, said the sequel will be ‘brave enough to ask the question we are all afraid to ask: are we losing our children to the screen?’ The film’s premise: Woody and Buzz return to find their owner, now a teenager, glued to a device, the toys abandoned in a dusty box. It is a story about being replaced.
Screen time has become a class issue. According to a 2023 report from the Royal College of Paediatrics, children from low-income homes spend an average of two hours more per day on screens than their wealthier peers. This is not a lifestyle choice. It is the result of parents working longer hours, cuts to youth services, and the simple fact that a phone is cheaper than a sports club membership.
The Toy Story franchise has always understood the anxiety of being left behind. In the first film, Woody feared being replaced by a space ranger. In Toy Story 5, the fear is being replaced by a screen. The terror Hanks describes is familiar to any parent who has watched a child’s face lit blue by a phone at the dinner table, the clatter of cutlery competing with the sound of a TikTok video.
But the film risks missing the real story. Screen addiction is not a moral failing. It is an economic wound. When a parent works two jobs, a tablet is a babysitter. When a youth centre closes, the street outside is a dangerous place. The solution is not a film, but a policy change.
Toy Story 5 is due for release next December. It will be watched by millions of children who know the taste of a microwave meal eaten alone. It will be watched by parents who will recognise the guilt in every frame. The film may generate headlines, but the anxiety it describes will remain long after the credits roll.
For British families, the real terror is not a cartoon. It is the cost of childcare, the price of a data plan, the exhaustion that makes a screen a necessary relief. Toy Story 5 might start a conversation. It is up to our politicians to finish it.
