There is no way to turn a phone truly "off", but you can isolate it from both listening in on conversations -- which modern phones do regardless of how they are configured -- and preventing it from connecting to a network.

You're never going to escape government surveillance, but you can take steps to prevent advertisers from hoovering up every last bit of personal data that they can.

I dont have an issue with it, I just didnt see the tie between disconnecting to be present for a social event and not being tracked.