Why does the fingerprint sensor trigger the screen?

When I touch the fingerprint sensor while I watch YouTube in the app it activates the controls on YouTube, like I was tapping the screen. Somehow the YouTube app and maybe other apps listen to the event of the fingerprint sensor and reacts to it. This is very annoying to me since the fingerprint sensor is in an easy to reach place so it happens often. This is reproducible on different phones and android versions. Is there a way to disable this behavior somehow?