How many times do you look at your phone throughout the day? Odds are you do it a lot more than you actually think. According to CNN, the average teenager spends about nine hours on his or her phone every day, which is about the same amount of time that the average teen sleeps. So why has looking at phones become second nature for this young generation of teens? Two words: Social media.

Social media includes smart phone apps like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to name a few. With these apps teens are allowed to share, like, post and send to their hearts desire. But teens seem to take this freedom and desire to a new level when they begin to use it while they should be doing something more important.

According to CNN, half of teens say they “often” or “sometimes” use social media or watch TV while doing their homework. Some 60 percent say they text and more than 75 percent say they listen to music while working on schoolwork at home. Even though students keep themselves entertained while doing algebra homework, experts question their quality of work while they are multitasking. However, according to CNN, nearly two-thirds of teenagers say watching TV or texting makes no difference and more than 50 percent feel the same way when it comes to social media.

So why do teenagers feel the need to constantly look at social media even when they are supposed to be doing homework? A term psychologists use to explain this is called “FOMO” (also known as the fear of missing out) is often the main cause. Teens believe that while they are not looking at social media their friends are posting and sharing without them. This fear causes them to continually look minute after minute just to be sure that nothing is happening without them seeing it first.

Sociologist Robert Faris, a school bullying and youth aggression researcher and the other author of the study, “#BeingThirteen” said, “There’s a lot of anxiety about what’s going on online, when they’re not actually online, so that leads to compulsive checking.” According to CNN, the more teens look at social media, the study found, the more distressed they can become. The heaviest social media users admitted to checking their social media feeds more than 100 times a day, sometimes even during school hours, just to make sure they were not missing out.

So the next time you think about hitting that unlock button or press the Instagram logo, think about the real reason you want to like, post, share, and send.