Convert date/time string to date

Question

I'm using a data expression for a pie chart in my dashboard.  I could not get the date selector to work to set an filter action, and realized it's because it's seeing my date/time field (created_date) as a string.  
I found this post from 2018 from @XanderBakker , listing out every month, etc to parse it out.  Is this still necessary or is there a less involved way to get the data part into a date format.  I don't need time, just M/D/Y.

https://community.esri.com/t5/developers-questions/text-to-date-using-arcade-expressions/td-p/523768

Anonymous User · Answer

FYI, I went back to this and someone else had the same problem and a response had the fix.  I had to cast my date field as a number, don't know why, but was an easy fix.  
The post that had the fix is here:

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-dashboards-questions/date-fields-in-data-expressions-for-serial-charts/m-p/1135728#M5761

EmilyMcLeanACTGOV · Answer

There are a few reasons why your date field may be stored as a string. The following article talks about some of the different reasons.

Work with Date Fields

Anonymous User · Answer

I'm using the standard editor tracking date field in my hosted layer, so I don't think I have any options on altering the field type.  I'm also a little confused on how it's technically a date field, but yet stored as string??