You may escape the manipulation by WNGs, but the detangling that you have to do later is manipulation that undoes all the good your low mani did. Also I do think wetting the hair all the time can weaken it. There's a school of thought that hair is weak when wet so I don't know how much this may have to do with your breakage.
If you look at MOST 4Bers with long hair, you will see that they rarely, if ever, WNG'd; they keep their hair stretched in braids or twists or cornrows or banding and hardly manipulate their hair; they don't wear their hair out every day unless it's in a braid-out or twist-out or bun. In other words, they aren't combing their hair day in, day out, but rather will give it a break from daily styling by wearing styles that last more than one day but that also do not lead to tangles that will later cost them strands of hair.
Please don't take this the wrong way but when people say that they don't have split ends, I give them the side-eye because I don't believe there's any way to know that unless one JUST had a trim a few seconds/minutes ago. What people don't realize is splits starts at a scale the naked eye cannot see. And even when the naked eye can see, you may see some even at about 1 millimeter size (but just think about how strained your eyes would be if you had to look at even just ten strands focusing on so small a split), but most times you will not see the splits because you get there too late. The absence of an actual split doesn't mean your ends are in good shape. Splits tear away and so you may not be sure what you're looking at. To help illustrate this, I took a photo of an end of my shed hair magnified 4 times. I honestly couldn't really see what it looked like just looking at it but with my camera's zoom, I could clearly see that the end is worn out. I then cut the hair so that I'd have a freshly trimmed end and the difference between a damaged end and one that isn't, is very clear.
Also you will see from my the size of my fingers/thumb that we're looking at a very small section of my hair. Imagine having to look at
all your strands with such concentration/focus to know for sure that they look like the second one. Can anyone say eye-strain and headache? And because your hair is short, it's not possible for you to even do the futile S&D that many people use as their "proof" that they have no splits. Scientific photos of split ends show the damage starts at a microscopic scale so unless you're able to zoom in on each strand to that level, I think it's inaccurate for anyone to say they have no split ends. Trimming, sealing and protective styling can keep the splits to a minimum or limit them to the tips of your hair, but I don't think there's any way to fully eliminate them. Because as soon as you trim, you just exposed a new cross section to the elements, so moisture loss from that now open section is inevitable whenever it's exposed to the air thus starting the cycle all over again.
Yes you can.
It'd give your hair a break from daily styling/manipulation.