If you don't take the phone away, the child won't interact at all, beyond the superficial, ``school was fine.'' If you do take the phone away, do you really believe interactions won't be tense or contentious?
These sorts of issues aren't things you address in a moment. Yeah, if you suddenly take a phone away, you kid will likely blow up. But the problem wasn't created in a moment, either. Things got to a bad place over time so it's unsurprising that improving them takes time. Further, in the heat of the moment everyone (including the parents) are less even-keeled, so most progress happens when tempers are cool.
One thing we did for awhile was, as a family, we came up with the rule that from 5-7pm (IIRC) each night there were no devices/screens and we had to be around each other during that time. (We settled on that after a family discussion and some back and forth negotiating, but eventually everyone committed to it.) We did it for /months/ before I felt like it really paid off, but eventually every one of the kids recognized that we were stronger as a family and that they actually enjoyed the screen breaks. And one side effect of it was that we all started talking to each other a lot more, but again, it was a slow process. What works varies by family and changes over time as the family changes, but the meaningful changes seem to always take a lot of time.
If communication is in a decent state, then another thing to look at is the rules for the kids, like: have we really given our kid a chance to weigh in on things or do we just dictate? As a parent you do sometimes just have to put your foot down, but there's a world of difference between shutting down pushback with "I'm the parent and that's the way it is" and a collaborative attitude and an open conversation with real listening and sharing of viewpoints/concerns and, where appropriate, some compromising. Are our rules based on solid principles or just things we pulled out of the air?
The article mentioned that the kids were addicted to social media. If it's an actual addiction, then that probably needs to be addressed with professional help. If it's more a compulsion/habit, then good communication is again key. Does the kid agree it's excessive but isn't sure how to reign it in? Or does the kid genuinely think it's just fine? Gotta figure that out first, but in either case, jamming the signal to their phones doesn't really address the problem.