Google Play Services and the Play Store are the foundation of "Google's" tracking of nearly everything you do with your phone. Background speech transcription, 24/7 GPS location monitoring, every website you visit, how long you spend in apps and so much more. Removing play services limits the amount of apps you can use, but you can install a replacement that doesn't track you. I like the F-droid store because everything is open source and free.
Check our Rob Braxman Tech for more digital privacy info and tutorials.
Go to xda-developers.com, find your device, and look up a tutorial on how to root it. You will likely have to unlock your bootloader which means your phone is going to be wiped.
Alternatively, after you root your phone and install twrp you can install lineageos.
Another Google keyword to look up is microg on xda- developers.
If you wanna go real frisky, install xposed frameworks and figure out how it works. Xposed framework is what will be used to hack the upcoming covid pass app that you will need to travel and one day probably do anything.
Download signal to message people, it's end to end encrypted and had self destructing messages.