Retooling one's life so that you no longer need a cell phone is bordering on essential practice these days, I think.
We must remember that the human race got along just fine without cell phones for its entire existence until only about 20 years ago. While many aspects of modern life have morphed around cell/smart phone culture to the point of its being arguably indispensable, I think it's one of those forces well worth resisting.
I consider cell phones in most use cases scenarios a convenience at best and an addiction at worst.
For instance, waaaay back in the late 90's, my mom got a cell phone for the car, "in case of emergencies". That was the reason used by many early adopters, and it softened the market up for further acceptance. And notwithstanding a few anecdotes here and there, how often, really, does a person find themselves stranded by the side of the highway, far from civilization? I'd argue that it takes some effort/negligence to create that condition these days.
I've met many moms who insist on their children carrying a cell phone so that they are within constant digital reach. -Going so far as to get up in arms when schools try to prohibit students from bringing cell phones into classrooms. That's a new thing, for sure!
Many businesses expect their employees to be reachable at all times regardless of location, to the point where it may not be possible to perform one's job function these days without being linked up to the cell phone system. That's probably one of the more egregious infiltrations of the tech into our lives.
But nonetheless, it all comes down to invoking will power and the willingness to building strategic enclosures. The first, best way to lower your exposure to cell phones is to not have one.
Whatever a person needs to do to re-organize their life to achieve this can be done. It's the rare case where it's simply impossible to get along without a portable phone in one's pocket, and I'd argue that declarations to the contrary are likely bourne of addiction rather than any real necessity.
Personally, for no other reason than curiosity and interest, I decided to try to make a cellphone-free lifestyle a priority back in the early 2000's when it was possible to treat it all like a low impact game, making simple choices to circumvent the gradual take-over moves used by the telecom companies. Today, my phone is an old wired model hitched up to a skype-style modem. My computer connects to the internet via ethernet cable plugged into a router with no Wifi. When I'm away from home, I keep the Wifi turned off on my laptop. Messages can wait and if people can't reach me.., so what? Very, very little in the world is of such critical importance that it can't stand being a little patient. -And in terms of missing out on all the clever smart-phone features... Well, I have to say, it's pretty cool being comfortable reading a map while walking or driving around a new area, and having to remember facts and figures without Google's help. All the outsourcing of mental tasks people do these days has taken a toll far more rapidly on the population than I ever would have guessed.
Granted, I find myself largely detached from the greater social media ecosystems, but from what I can see, those bear more in common with bird flock movements and herds of sheep than they do with the concerns of higher beings. I have to wonder if humans have ever been trained into such constant mob-like thinking before these modern times? Instant messaging platforms seem to pull people into surface-level awareness patterns and group-think and lock them there. The effect is so profound that I strongly suspect it to be a Matrix control mechanism and/or trap specifically designed to lower the vibration of entire populations, guiding people away from normal pathways of growth. -Like gently pushing a baby back to the floor when it might otherwise try to graduate from crawling to walking. Maybe that's hard to see unless you're detached from the cell phone universe, but it's a very stand-out feature of modern life in my eyes. It's damned weird, in fact.
Now I will use Wifi sometimes when I'm on the road or if my curiosity just gets the better of me when I'm at a cafe, but those are rare circumstances. For the most part, my sans-cellphone lifestyle doesn't inconvenience me at all. I don't notice not having the ability to connect to the web while walking around because I never had it in the first place, and the psychological benefits are fairly obvious. I mean, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, or even in any given room, but I can't help but notice that I seem with ever greater facility to be able to run circles around people as the years go by.
Partly, I think, this is due to SOTT style consistant learning and de-toxing, etc., but I strongly suspect it has just as much to do with the people around me actively regressing. You can be a mediocre specimine and simply not decay when everybody else is melting down to eventually be the most powerful person standing.
All of which is to say...
People can get along without their cell phones and would probably benefit from doing so.