I haven't answered the phone in years. All calls from unknown numbers go straight to silent, and anyone in my contacts knows not to call me anyway. What kind of real person uses the phone nowadays? It's literally scams, customer support, billing departments, credit collection agencies, and generally people you don't talk to as long as you can avoid it. Normal people use FaceTime, WhatsApp, Messenger, Zoom, etc.

There's basically zero upside to phone calls, and frankly nor is there much for SMS either. I would suggest that phone companies completely deprecate their telecom networks and go all-in on internet, but then the spam would migrate to the apps (it's already begun with whatsapp), so I don't want to give them any ideas.