You’re not alone, says from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The research group asked 2277 Americans how they use their phones, and got some interesting results. Some 13 percent of respondents admitted they used their cell phone to avoid social encounters, while 42 percent turn to their devices as a cure for boredom.

While those types of cell phone use may seem shallow, many of us are using our devices for more vital purposes as well.

Four in ten respondents said they had found themselves in an emergency situation in which they used their cell phone to get help, while just over half used their phone to obtain immediate information over the past 30 days. That may be a crutch, though: 27 percent said they had had trouble completing a task in the past month because their phone wasn’t around.

Pew looked at other negatives of cell phone use, too. Over the previous 30 days, 20 percent of cell phone owners said they had become frustrated over slow data transfers, and 10 percent said they had trouble entering a lot of text on their devices.

Another 16 percent of cell phone owners reported having difficulty reading something on their cell phone because the text was too small. Not surprisingly, this complaint came most frequently from respondents aged 50 to 64.