This fear is well founded. Assuming that a person doesn't accidentally crack their screen the first thing to break on an iPhone is the home button. Long time heavy users of iPhones almost always have to resort to the accessibility buttons.
I figure, given how many times a day I use the home button, if I can half that, I double the lifespan of the device (over my previous iDevice, on which the home button stopped working & I thus had to throw out).