The challenge the author set was to go without a phone for a "couple of weeks", not "for your entire life". For that to be a useful challenge and build empathy as is the goal, the people taking the challenge need to be put into a position where they must make a phone call at least once in those two weeks. Otherwise it does nothing at all.

The author appears to be upgrading their internet connection, moving, and arranging financing for a house in their totally normal week. For them, it is a useful challenge. But for my phone use patterns it is utterly useless. I'd need to run the experiment for a decade.

But thanks a lot for telling me that my lived experience is invalid and disproven by "data".