Toy Story 5 is a tearjerker for adults—especially those (like me) who were kids themselves when the first Toy Story came out (1995) and have aged alongside the franchise. As I note in my review, the film is geared toward adults as much as it is their kids.

As I watched Toy Story 5 with my 7, 5, and 4-year-old kids this past weekend, I felt a lot of things. The movie captures the real worries many parents in my generation have about kids coming of age in a world of digital tech. But it also stirs up memories and nostalgia for our own pre-internet, pre-smartphone, pre-AI analog childhoods.

The tire swing image which closes the film carries a lot of nostalgic weight. It made me recall the freewheeling, unsupervised outdoor adventures I had as a kid in summer: exploring the creek behind my house, riding bikes to the neighborhood pool, setting off Roman Candles around Fourth of July, playing driveway basketball or rollerblade street hockey with friends, building forts, playing in treehouses, catching grasshoppers by day and fireflies by night.

It’s not that I never watched TV or played video games as a kid in the 80s and 90s. I did. But these were really the only things that happened on screens. Much of my childhood play happened off screens, outside, exploring the tangible world. Is a childhood like that possible anymore? In a world where screens are now “for everything,” as Woody says in the film, how can kids resist their dominance?

If not a fully analog childhood, is a “tree swing” childhood still possible? I hope Toy Story 5 inspires parents to believe it is.