July 13th 2026

Pixar just diagnosed the problem, but brands can be the cure

Cat Botibol shares that the industry has the power to take on Toy Story 5’s big villain.

Cat Botibol

Managing Director Studio Secret Cinema

Toy Story 5's big villain isn't a rival toy; it's a tablet and social media. Woody and Buzz are up against a screen, and if that doesn't highlight where the cultural conversation has landed, the government's proposed social media ban for under-16s certainly seals it. Screens are having a moment, and it’s not a positive one.

But let's not pretend this is simply toys versus screens or analogue versus digital. That's an easy headline, not the real one. The actual fault line is passive versus ‘lean in’ and solitary versus collective engagement.

The problem isn’t always the screen content either. It's the behaviours: head down and zoning out rather than curiosity and getting involved. I want to unpack this from two perspectives I navigate every day: as the MD of a company that designs experiences for a living, and as a parent trying to figure this out at home with my two nearly eight-year-old girls.

The professional view

Ripping an iPad out of a child's hands and handing over a colouring book isn't going to cut it. You're not offering a swap, you're offering a downgrade, and no kid chooses that.

The gap to close isn't screen time, it's participation. If you give them something that grabs them just as hard, involving other people in the room rather than an algorithm, you're working with human nature instead of fighting it. The answer isn't necessarily ‘no tech.’ Sometimes the smartest move is using tech as a tool to get kids looking outward again.

We recently designed an event to launch the instax mini 13 camera, with challenges and activities that inspired people to use the camera in different ways. For kids, giving them a tool to document a ‘journey,’ even if just the walk to the supermarket, gets them looking at the world in a different way. Or consider how you could use a platform like Pinterest: encourage building a mood board not for endless scrolling, but as a spark for something real, a painting, a bedroom redesign, or a new toy they then go and build. The tech isn't the destination; it's the tool that leads somewhere else, because deeper connections always happen offline.

The goal shouldn't be to ‘get people off screens,’ but to help them use screens as a springboard into the room and the people right in front of them.
Cat Botibol, Managing Director, Studio Secret Cinema

Zoning out vs zoning in isn't just a challenge for kids. Just last month, Rosamund Pike returned to the stage after the final bows of ‘Inter Alia’ at Wyndham's Theatre to share that she’d noticed someone texting during the play's most emotional scene, breaking the connection she was trying to build with the room. Cynthia Erivo and Andrew Scott have made similar pleas mid-show. Grown adults, despite paying good money to be there, still struggle to leave their phones alone. The power of collective awe at live experiences is irreplaceable, yet people are indirectly taking themselves out of the moment.

It's exactly why we now design our events intentionally around people and their pocket screens, using clear moments and gentle instruction to guide when they should, and shouldn't, look at their devices. It’s not about a blanket ban, but rather thoughtfully designed experiences that show people when it's not the right time to scroll.

That's the real opportunity for brands. The goal shouldn't be to ‘get people off screens,’ but to help them use screens as a springboard into the room and the people right in front of them. Whether it’s a pop-up, a sports session, an immersive production, or an IRL business meeting, everything works better when it borrows the instant gratification trick screens are so good at and hands it straight back to real life.

The personal view

At home, the theory holds up. My girls are nearly eight, and the truth is they rarely ask for a screen out of boredom, it's usually the opposite. The only time they tell me they're bored is in the 15 minutes right after we've turned a screen off, whether that's a computer game, an iPad, or the telly. It's a real phenomenon, something close to a comedown. Their brains have grown accustomed to constant novelty and instant rewards, so normal life feels flat by comparison for a bit. It's not that they lack imagination; they just need a moment to reset before they find it again.

This is exactly why I've stopped viewing the screen itself as the enemy in our house. What I want for them, and what I want brands to build for families like mine, is the same thing: not a guilt trip about screen time, but a genuinely brilliant reason to put it down or to pick it up with purpose for ten minutes, then go do something with other people because of it.

And spoiler alert: At the end of Toy Story 5, the toys successfully connect Bonnie and Blaze for a real-world playdate. So it all turns out positive in the end. Brands could take heed and think about how they can use screen media to get people to connect in the real world, instead of stealing their attention from living.