Defeat Lust & Pornography hands texting on iphone
Defeat Lust & Pornography 3 minute read

How the iPhone Changed Everything

Last Updated: June 22, 2021

A hundred years from now, students of Twenty-First Century history will learn that a major turning point in humanity’s cultural evolution came on January 9, 2007. That was the day the iPhone was introduced.

You remember what life was like before the iPhone, don’t you? Back when people in the same room would actually talk to each other? When they could eat their food without photographing it? When they could maintain eye-contact for more than a minute?

There were earlier significant dates, of course. January 7, 1977, for example: the day the first personal computer, the Commodore PET, went on sale. August 6, 1991, the day the World Wide Web went live for the very first time. But it was not until these two streams—the personal computer and the Internet—converged in a device you can hold in your hand that everything really changed.

The Smartphone Revolution

The iPhone launched the smartphone revolution, which has completely changed the way nearly everyone connects. While waiting for my lunch today, I accepted a friend request using my Samsung Android, bringing my total number of close, personal Facebook friends to 3,927. I don’t really know most of these people, of course. I may have met them, but all I really know about most of them is the version of themselves they present online. And all these “friends” know about me is what they see online, which is hardly a complete picture. Because I typically post on Facebook only while I’m traveling, some of them evidently believe I live on airplanes.

The smartphone has changed the way we communicate, the way we learn, the way we navigate. More than that, it has fundamentally altered the way we perceive the world. Just think about it. How much of your life today did you apprehend through that little window you hold in your hand? And make no mistake about it—the smartphone is a window. It is not a door. You cannot actually enter cyberspace. You can only watch it from the other side of the glass and imagine what it’s like to be in someone else’s life.

iPorn: The Warping of the Human Brain

The smartphone has also become the primary means by which most of us access pornography. That’s another big change. When I got started as a porn user back in the 1970s, pornography came primarily in print form, in glossy publications called “men’s magazines,” because porn users in those days were almost exclusively male. (Guys bought Playboy and Penthouse back then. Girls bought romance novels, or porn without the pictures.) Today, however, 40% of the visitors to sexually-oriented websites are female, and the fastest growing demographic among the sexually addicted population is female.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that among adolescents, girls and boys are rapidly approaching parity in their porn use. This trend has profound and troubling implications for our future. Thanks to advances in medical science, we now have a pretty clear picture of what happens in the brain during sexual arousal and climax. In addition to triggering an avalanche of endorphins—those “feel-good” chemicals that make the experience so pleasurable—the brain instructs the posterior pituitary gland to release oxytocin, the bonding hormone. Oxytocin is the same substance that is released in a parent and an infant during breastfeeding or skin-to-skin contact. It is oxytocin that creates the attachment we now know is absolutely vital to healthy psychological development. (You’ve probably heard about those studies of neglected kids in Romanian orphanages and the long-term effects they suffered because they were deprived of physical touch.) Without attachment, you can actually die from loneliness.

The Ancients knew something about the bonding power of sex. In its first mention of sex, for example, the Bible says that “Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and brought forth Cain.” The euphemism translated “knew” in Genesis 4:1 is the Hebrew word yada, a term laden with meaning. Yada in this context denotes something far more than mere familiarity; it describes a deep and intimate connection. Small wonder the Bible says that in marital relations, “the two become one flesh.”

Here’s what makes modern-day pornography—the crap that a heartless and highly profitable industry now happily delivers in sample form to anyone, free of charge—so very, very destructive. Today’s porn produces sensory overload. Full-motion video, complete with sound, overwhelms the frontal cortex, the part of the brain where rational thinking takes place and moral judgments are made. It stimulates the pleasure centers located deep in the nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain that cannot distinguish between virtual experience and actual experience. Today’s porn fools the brain into triggering the pleasurable chemical cascade and releasing oxytocin, even though no flesh-and-blood partner is present.

In the thrall of Internet pornography, millions of us are now bonding day after day with an endless parade of phantoms. We’ve become hooked on false intimacy, hoodwinked by images that evaporate the moment the screen goes dark. Our portable porn projectors have trivialized and commoditized sex, reducing the sacred gift of yada to nothing more than “yada, yada, yada.”

Smartphones are not evil in themselves, of course, but like any major technological innovation they carry destructive potential. Unless we are careful to protect ourselves and our children, we may one day discover that the instrument we thought would deliver us from loneliness has actually done the opposite: destroyed our very capacity for connection and left us lonelier than we ever imagined.

  1. Lily

    It doesn’t talk about Steve Jobs invention

  2. Shakira

    How Pornography affects all parties involved!….. Porno is not out- its not a thing of you the past. Further more, from my very own personal experience, I believe porn in itself is a lustful demonic spirit, that,…… 1 Entices our men/ husbands and keep them in a stage of zombiism. 2. Pornography breaks up a happy or sad home if allowed and not dealt with accordingly.

    I was in a relationship with someone whom when I met I was a bigger size, basically plus size. Over the last 6 months I went from 234lbs to 170 lbs, I had a heart condition, and palpitations. My doctor advised weight loss. I listened, my health got 50% better, but our sex life had took a huge hit.

    I had convinced myself that my significant other was noblonger interested in me due to the fact if the weight loss… He would drop hints by saying stuff like…. Oh look at that skinny chic on t.v she needs to eat…. Or she needs a meal…. Or I’ll she looks like a twig, where is the meat at….. It went from that to me noticing that he would always be on me about finishing my plate if food.

    He would say comment’s like ….oh we gone put some weight on u one way or another…. It just so happen that one day my guy came to visit me and brought with him a floppy from his computer…..we watched it together…. I watched him go into a frenzy when two huge ladies occupied the screen in porn. He quickly hit all the buttons on my p.c to stop it from showing anything further…..

    I noticed his convoy was in interest to big women, as so was/is his porn. I caught him in the room beating his private to a porno naked at the foot of my bed…. I’ve also caught him in a private hall alone , getting his pleasures… It is a complete turn off, and I made that clear to him, I also told him , its very hurtful to me

    • Kay Bruner

      I’m so sorry for what you’re going through, Shakira. I don’t know if you’ve read any of our other articles here? A while back, I wrote a post about what healthy boundaries can look like in a relationship. Just like getting healthy physically, we can get healthy emotionally too and decide what we do and don’t want in our lives. I’m glad you’ve been able to speak up about how hurtful his behavior is to you, and I encourage you to be wise and draw those lines where you need them to be. You might appreciate our free download, Hope After Porn, as several women talk about their boundaries in recovery. Blessings, Kay

  3. steven hurd

    Great article and very well written. Praise God for inspiring you to write this!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related in Defeat Lust & Pornography

Editor's Picks

A teenage girl standing apart from a group of friends.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

I Was a 12-Year-Old Girl Addicted To Porn

All the assumptions that pornography was a boy’s struggle completely dismissed me,…

2 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

Woman habitually looking at her phone.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

Porn Habit vs. Porn Addiction: Is There a Difference?

What’s the difference between being addicted to porn and merely having a…

6 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

A teenage girl using a computer.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

Is Something Wrong With Me?: A Woman’s Struggle With Porn

Sin has taken the form of nude images, explicit magazines, TV shows,…

4 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

Woman reading the Bible with her cup of coffee.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

How to Overcome Porn Addiction According to the Bible

The Bible clearly tells us what we should and shouldn’t do. It…

5 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

A young woman singing with a microphone in church.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

I Was the “Perfect” Christian Girl and Addicted to Porn

I was introduced to pornography toward the end of elementary school. As…

3 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

A teenage girl alone at night with her phone.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

I Thought I Was the Only Girl to Ever Struggle With This

The struggles I have had with pornography have been long and hard.…

3 minute read

Read Post

Related in Defeat Lust & Pornography

A teenage girl standing apart from a group of friends.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

I Was a 12-Year-Old Girl Addicted To Porn

All the assumptions that pornography was a boy’s struggle completely dismissed me,…

All the assumptions that pornography was a boy’s struggle completely dismissed me, a twelve-year-old girl addicted to porn. I was part of a large percentage of teens using pornography, and while so many of us…

2 minute read

0 comments

Woman habitually looking at her phone.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

Porn Habit vs. Porn Addiction: Is There a Difference?

What’s the difference between being addicted to porn and merely having a…

What’s the difference between being addicted to porn and merely having a porn habit? Habits are behaviors that have become automatic over time. Addiction involves a deeper change in your neurochemistry. Habits might be changed…

6 minute read

0 comments

A teenage girl using a computer.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

Is Something Wrong With Me?: A Woman’s Struggle With Porn

Sin has taken the form of nude images, explicit magazines, TV shows,…

Sin has taken the form of nude images, explicit magazines, TV shows, R-rated movies, sexual assault, and little minds being exposed to perversion at a young age. Whether the calendar reads 1932 or 2024, both…

4 minute read

0 comments

Woman reading the Bible with her cup of coffee.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

How to Overcome Porn Addiction According to the Bible

The Bible clearly tells us what we should and shouldn’t do. It…

The Bible clearly tells us what we should and shouldn’t do. It tells us that watching pornography is a sin and something Christians should strive to avoid.  But what if you are addicted to pornography? Suppose…

5 minute read

0 comments

A young woman singing with a microphone in church.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

I Was the “Perfect” Christian Girl and Addicted to Porn

I was introduced to pornography toward the end of elementary school. As…

I was introduced to pornography toward the end of elementary school. As a young Christian girl who had never imagined, seen or heard about such things, this exposure planted a seed in my mind that…

3 minute read

0 comments

A teenage girl alone at night with her phone.

Defeat Lust & Pornography

I Thought I Was the Only Girl to Ever Struggle With This

The struggles I have had with pornography have been long and hard.…

The struggles I have had with pornography have been long and hard. It is a road that I have traveled since I was a young girl and something that has filled my life with so…

3 minute read

0 comments