I use wired earbuds. Last week, I started noticing issues with my current pair on my android phone. The first issue was that the audio would disconnect if the headphones cord going into the jack was slightly moved. The issue seemed to progress, whereby audio disconnects happened more commonly. Eventually, the headphone issue started changing tracks in Tidal (the headphones do not have a next track button) all by itself and launching the google music app and playing songs in it.

I assumed my earbuds were at fault, but the same earbuds perform fine in my laptop and other earbuds experience the same issue in my phone.

Restarting the phone temporarily removes this issue, but it seems to start up again the longer the phone is on.

Has anyone else experience this? Does anyone know what's going on and how I can fix this? Did an update get pushed to my phone that's intended to brick earbuds?

Edit: Thanks to everyone for their helpful suggestions and comments ☺️!