It's "losing." Jessie says she's losing Bonnie to this device.
Not that Bonnie chose the device. Not that Bonnie prefers it. Not that Bonnie made a considered decision and came down on the side of Lilypad over physical play. She's being lost — which means the agency is on Lilypad's side, not Bonnie's.
That distinction is what the Difficult to Self-Regulate dimension measures.
What the film shows
Deseret News columnist Naomi Schaefer Riley attended the film with her teenage children and documented what happens to Bonnie: she becomes "increasingly withdrawn, glued to her screen from morning until night." The session has no internal end point. It terminates when external forces intervene — parents, sleep, the demands of the plot.
Riley's conclusion is exact: "No child is going to give up screens voluntarily and the movie's creators don't pretend otherwise."
The resolution isn't Bonnie developing discipline. The resolution is her parents disabling the chat feature. The device is removed from the equation. That's not a self-regulation story. That's an external enforcement story — which is what you get when the product is specifically engineered to defeat self-regulation.
Lilypad as AI companion
BFI critic Leigh Singer identified the mechanism: Lilypad "functions like the adolescent emotions who take over teenage Riley in Inside Out 2, assuming she knows best for her host."
This is precise. Lilypad is not a passive screen. It's voiced — Greta Lee gives it a personality. It responds to Bonnie. It learns what she responds to and serves more of it. It has a relationship with her. Over time, putting down Lilypad stops feeling like closing an app and starts feeling like leaving someone.
The AI companion bond is a deliberate design pattern. A product that Bonnie has a relationship with has higher exit costs than a product she merely uses. Woody and Jessie never demanded Bonnie stay. They sat quietly in the toy box when she wasn't there. Lilypad, by design, never sits quietly.
The cyberbullying trap
Engadget described what happens when Bonnie's parents disable the chat feature: the bullying stops, but so does Bonnie's access to her peer network. The chat was simultaneously the source of harm and the source of belonging.
This is the self-regulation trap the film captures most clearly. Even after the platform produced a negative outcome — cyberbullying, distress, the need for parental intervention — the habit was already formed and the social cost of exit was already real. Bonnie isn't just addicted to Lilypad. She's socially invested in it. Leaving means social isolation, not just withdrawal.
This is why Difficult to Self-Regulate correlates with Social Pressure at the high end of the DarkBadge scale. The social layer is both the lure and the lock. You can't leave without losing the friends. You can't stay without being manipulated.
What the toys offered
Woody and Jessie didn't create exit friction. They didn't send notifications. They didn't have a social layer that Bonnie would lose access to if she stopped playing. They sat in the toy box and waited.
That passivity is, paradoxically, what healthy play looks like. The toy doesn't pursue the child. The child pursues the toy — or doesn't. The choice is genuinely free. Bonnie could stop and nothing would happen.
Lilypad was designed so that stopping costs something. That design choice is what this dimension measures.
The scores
Duolingo's Difficult to Self-Regulate score reflects its streak mechanics: missing a day feels like a real loss, because the product has trained users to invest identity in the streak. Roblox's social layer creates obligation: friends are waiting, games are in progress, leaving mid-session has social consequences. TikTok's recommendation engine personalizes so precisely that the feed feels like it was made for you — and leaving it feels like leaving a space that exists only for you.
The toy horse doesn't follow Bonnie out of the room. Every product on this list does.