What a time to be alive.

At the Toronto Zoo, smartphone addiction become an ongoing issue, especially for one gorilla named Nassir who may have a slight addiction to screen time. As a result, zookeepers are asking visitors to stop showing the gorilla videos on their phones through the glass.

Zoo director Maria Franke told the Toronto Star,

We've had a lot of members and guests that actually will put their phones up to the glass and show him videos. And Nassir is so into those videos. It was causing him to be distracted and not interacting with the other gorillas, and you know, being a gorilla. He was just so enthralled with gadgets and phones and the videos.

Now I'm not usually one to point out similarities between animals and humans, but I can't help but see the parallels here. Watch this video:

While we're on the subject of screen time, let me just include one quick reminder for all the humans out there reading this on a screen, gorillas aren't the only ones suffering from an overabundance of screen time. Kids, grownups, and gorillas alike could all use a little more time away from the phone.

Another Toronto zookeeper, Hollie Ross, said that the zoo actually does show the animals things like nature documentaries behind the scenes, but they don't want guests showing them just anything!

We just want to make sure that we know the content. Very much like managing an account for a child or something, you want to make sure that your parental controls are on, and that you're in control of what the content is that they're seeing

I can imagine it would be very confusing to show a gorilla the movie Tarzan for instance. It was pretty confusing for my toddler as well.

Ross went on to say,

We just want the gorillas to be able to be gorillas.

And I would add, and our kids to be kids.