Ringer volume bug ios 18.6.2

I keep my phone permanently on “ringer off” and have always been able to change the volume of my ringer with the left-sided physical volume buttons on my iPhone (for my ios clock app morning alarms). In my control center, there is a volume control panel that separately controls sound coming from my iPhone (ie. non-ringer audio such as videos, music, or social media apps audio). Ever since the new ios update, the control center’s volume control now takes over my ringer volume setting. When I’m at work or in public and scrolling through social media, even though I keep my phone always as ringer-off, I go to my control center and ensure I drag the volume setting down to the very bottom (so I don’t accidentally blast a social media audio and embarrass myself). Unfortunately, this has been messing with my morning alarms because I keep the control center volume setting down to 0 but want my ringer volume at full blast for my morning alarms (as I have always been able to do for years). Basically my concern/question is I am not sure why the ringer volume and control center volume are now acting in sync when in the past they were always independent of each other and able to be adjusted separately since they serve different purposes. I have not made any changes to my iPhone or its settings other than updating to ios 18.6.2 a few days ago and therefore can only blame this new change on a software bug… unless someone has other thoughts/ideas/suggestions?