It found that 89% of interactions with phones were unprompted, with only 11% responding to an alert.
Group chats were also considered a "source of distress" for participants in the study.
Scrolling features on Instagram and Facebook led to the longest interactions, the research found.
Checking your smartphone is largely caused by “an urge of the user to interact with their phone that seems to occur in an almost automatic manner, just as a smoker would light a cigarette”, the study says.
