Seduction

Pornography consumption has skyrocketed in recent years, especially among young people. Despite this, many Americans, including Christians, remain unconcerned about its societal effects.

A new report by Barna and Pure Desire reveals that 61% of Americans now view porn at least occasionally, up from 55% in 2015. Even within the church, pastors are more likely to report personal histories of porn use, with nearly 1 in 5 currently struggling.

The report underscores pornography's widespread accessibility, noting that it "touches all segments of society" regardless of age, gender, or religious beliefs. The increased availability of online porn, coupled with factors like social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, has contributed to this surge. One recent study suggested 2.5 million people view online pornography every minute, and online porn consumption has increased by 91 percent since 2000.

While some faith-based efforts advocate for legal restrictions on the porn industry, others focus on helping individuals overcome pornography habits. However, the report highlights a significant hurdle: many people, including Christians, simply don't see a problem with it.

Research suggests that frequent porn use can lead to negative mental, emotional, and relational health outcomes. Despite this, many Christians remain comfortable with their own porn consumption. The reports states, “Over three in five Christians (62%) tell Barna they agree a person can regularly view pornography and live a sexually healthy life.” That’s only four percentage points behind the share of all US adults (66%) who don’t consider viewing pornography harmful.

The report also explores the impact of pornography on relationships, particularly between men and women. Women are more likely to report negative effects, including feeling less attractive to their partners. Additionally, the study reveals that young people are increasingly exposed to pornography at younger ages, with the average age of first exposure now 12.

Possible Preaching Angle:

While there are efforts to address the issue, the report emphasizes the need for churches to offer support and resources for those struggling with pornography. By fostering a community where people can find help and healing, churches can play a crucial role in combating the pervasive influence of pornography.

Internal documents from Tik Tok executives and employees reveal that the social media platform is driven to capture the attention of users. Here were some of their own internal statements:

• An internal presentation on the 2021 strategy for TikTok describes the company as being in an “arms race for attention.”
• “It’s better to have young people as an early adopter, especially the teenagers in the U.S. Why? They’ve got a lot of time.”
• “Teenagers in the U.S. are a golden audience.
• “The product in itself has baked into it compulsive use.”
• “The reason kids watch TikTok is because the algorithm is really good... But I think we need to be cognizant of what it might mean for other opportunities. And when I say other opportunities, I literally mean sleep, and eating, and moving around the room, and looking at somebody in the eyes.”
• As an internal guide on push notifications explained, a key goal of TikTok’s push notifications is to “Activate & Engage users with the right content at the right time, to encourage users to open the App more and stay longer.”
• In a chat message a TikTok employee confirmed that the company’s “goal is not to reduce the time spent” on the TikTok app, but rather to ultimately “contribute to DAU [daily active users] and retention” of users.

A study of YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook revealed that American Teens—by a large margin—use YouTube (71%) more than TikTok (58%). But they're more likely to scroll through the TikTok app "almost constantly," according to Pew Research Center polling.

The stat points to how addictive and unhealthy TikTok's endless feed of videos can be for teens.

A study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that new TikTok accounts were shown self-harm and eating disorder content within minutes of scrolling.

• Suicide-related videos popped up within 2.6 minutes.
• Eating disorder content popped up in 8 minutes.

Because of this, there's suddenly a roaring national debate over fears about teens' privacy, their data security—and all the misinformation going straight to their phones. Citing national security concerns, Congress is pushing to force the platform's Chinese parent company to sell TikTok or face a ban.

Psychologist Jean Twenge says. "It's of course possible that people will replace TikTok time with YouTube time or Instagram time. However, TikTok's algorithm is particularly effective at getting you to spend more time on it."

Melissa Kearney, author of The Two-Parent Privilege offered the following observation on X:

I gave another talk about the Two Parent Privilege to college students today. And again, during the Q&A, a college student asked me why I don’t talk about porn/TikTok/OnlyFans, and how addiction to those sites is affecting young people’s ability to form healthy relationships.

I answered honestly that it wasn’t part of the lens I brought to the topic of family structure when I wrote the book. But it keeps coming up, over and over, in all the conversations I am having outside my usual policy/academic circles about marriage & family formation.

I have been quite struck by how often young people have brought this issue up to me over the past 7 months, and I don’t quite know what to make of it.

Columnist Peggy Noonan wrote a sobering article based on the work of researcher Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness. Noonan mentions a dark irony raised by Haidt: (Noonan’s words here) “Parents are often physically overprotective of their children out of fear of sexual predators. But those predators have moved online, where it’s easy to find and contact children.”

Then she quotes a section in the book where Haidt includes an essay from a 14-year-old girl:

I was ten years old when I watched porn for the first time. I found myself on Pornhub, which I stumbled across by accident and returned to out of curiosity. The website has no age verification, no ID requirement, not even a prompt asking me if I was over 18. The site is easy to find, impossible to avoid, and has become a frequent rite of passage for kids my age. Where was my mother? In the next room, making sure I was eating nine differently colored fruits and vegetables on the daily.

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who believes that your child’s smartphone is a threat to mental well-being. His new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, hit the No. 1 spot on the New York Times’ best-seller list.

This book has struck a chord with parents who have watched their kids sit slack-jawed and stock still for hours, lost in a welter of TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch, Facebook, and more. Haidt blames the spike in teen-age depression and anxiety on the rise of smartphones and social media, and he offers a set of prescriptions: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age sixteen.

His concern is with a lack of protection for the young in the virtual world. Tech companies and social-media platforms have been “designing a firehose of addictive content.” This is causing kids to forgo the social for the solitary and have “rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.” He continues:

In 2008 the original iPhone was an amazing Swiss Army knife. It was one of the greatest inventions of humankind. So, if I wanted to get from point A to point B, hey, there’s a mapping function. If I want to listen to music, hey, there’s an iPod, and it was not harmful to anyone’s mental health.

But then a couple things changed in rapid succession, and the smartphone changed from being our servant to being our master, for many people. In 2008, the App Store comes out. In 2009, push notifications come out. So now you have this thing in your pocket in which thousands or millions of companies are trying to get your attention and trying to keep you on their app. In 2010, the front-facing camera comes out; in 2010, Instagram comes out, which was the first social-media app designed to be exclusively used on the smartphone.

So, the environment that we were in suddenly changes. Now the smartphone isn’t just a tool; it is actually a tool of mass distraction. What I mean by “the great rewiring” is this … once we get super-viral social media in 2010, a lot of things change. Now it’s not just “Hey, I’m bored, let me play a video game.” It’s “My phone is pinging me saying, ‘Someone cited you in a photo. Someone said something about you. Somebody liked your post.’” We’ve given these companies a portal to our children. They can control and manipulate them, send them notifications whenever they want.

I’ve heard stories from Gen Z. They go over to their friends’ houses sometimes—not that much—and they’re on their phones separately. One might be watching her shows on Netflix. One might be checking her social. ... There’s a wonderful phrase from the sociologist Sherry Turkle: “Because of our phones, we are forever elsewhere. We’re never fully present.”

“It’s hijacking my brain.” Say young people addicted to social media and who are desperate for help. Many people have compared the addictive nature of social media to cigarettes. Checking your likes, they say, is the new smoke break. More than 75% of teens check their phone hourly, and half say they feel like they’re addicted to their devices.

Here are some of the things they’ve said:

“TikTok has me in a chokehold.”

“I would 1,000% say I am addicted.”

“I feel completely aware that it is hijacking my brain, but I can’t put it down. This leaves me feeling ashamed.”

Maybe you’ve had similar feelings yourself, no matter your age. Although it’s true social technologies offer some benefits, many people feel uncomfortable with how much time they spend online and often wonder if they’re addicted.

One approach is to view your media consumption as a diet. Just as there are many ways to have a healthy diet, there are also a variety of ways to develop healthy and personalized social media habits.

The researchers offered practical steps that you can take right now to reduce your dependence on social media. This includes turning off notifications, removing apps that you find harmful, curating your social media feed by unfollowing certain accounts, setting your phone to grayscale to reduce the appeal, and reserving phone-free time.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In addition to the practical steps listed above, the believer should add prayer (Heb. 4:14-16; Jam. 1:5), time in the Word (especially memorizing God’s promises for overcoming destructive habits, Ps. 119:11), and finding an accountability partner (Prov. 27:17).

Since the 2007 launch of the iPhone, smartphones have granted billions of people customized, password-protected, hand-held access to a near-limitless array of digital stimuli. And this portable, pervasive parallel universe is highly addictive, often by design.

The leading online pornography site, Pornhub, was founded in 2007, a few months before the first iPhone dropped. By 2009, the site was already receiving millions of monthly unique visitors. In November 2022, Pornhub was visited 10.2 billion times, making it the fourth most popular destination on the web, and 97% of that traffic came from mobile devices.

Phishing is a word for a type of online scamming and this type of activity is growing. The FBI reports over 300,000 complaints and over 50 million dollars in phishing losses in 2022.

Phishing occurs when someone sends you a bogus communication, usually by email or text message, disguised as a missive from a legitimate source, such as a bank or government agency. Usually the sender is angling for information, a credit card number or a transfer of funds. Sometimes there is an attachment containing malware, or a link where you can go to log in—which is to say, to have your password stolen.

Phishing grows and grows, demanding continual vigilance; billions of phishing emails are sent every day, some narrowly targeted and others broadcast widely. You have no doubt seen the con artists’ bait dangling in your inbox.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Phishing has some similarities to the kind of temptations Christians encounter. Every Christian is aware of the temptations of the world and what could happen if we are baited, hooked, and reeled in.

The number of teenagers who say they are chronically online has nearly doubled since 2015, according to a survey from Pew Research Center. YouTube is the most popular platform among U.S. teens, with 95% of the coveted demographic saying they use the site or its mobile app, the survey found. TikTok, which was launched in the U.S. in 2018 and thus didn’t exist the last time Pew performed a similar survey, is now used by about 67% of those between 13 and 17-years-old.

Almost half of U.S. teens reported that they are online “almost constantly,” a jump from the 24% who reported similar behavior to Pew in 2015. On social media specifically, 35% of U.S. teens reported that they were on at least one of the major platforms almost constantly.

In a kind of “sting operation” on the social media site TikTok, The Wall Street Journal created dozens of automated accounts, also called bots. They set up these bots to understand what TikTok shows young users. These bots, registered as users aged 13 to 15, were turned loose to browse TikTok’s videos. The videos revealed that TikTok can quickly drive minors (and of course adults, too) into “rabbit holes” of content focused on drugs, violence, or sex.

For example, one bot was programmed to dwell on videos with hashtags related to drugs. On its first day on the platform, the account lingered on a video of a young woman walking through the woods, with a caption suggesting she was in search of marijuana.

The next day, the account also watched a video of a marijuana-themed cake. Soon after, the teenager’s feed took an abrupt turn … with the majority of the next thousand videos touting drugs and drug use, including marijuana, psychedelics, and prescription medication. One showed an image of a person exhaling smoke and linked to a website that was “420 friendly” (code for marijuana use) and offered “yummy goodies for all.”

The article concluded that TikTok only needs one important piece of information to figure out what a user wants: The amount of time you linger over a piece of content. Every second you hesitate or re-watch, the app tracks you. Through that one powerful signal, TikTok can learn your most hidden interests and emotions, and drive users of any age deep into rabbit holes of content—in which feeds are heavily dominated by videos about a specific topic or theme. It’s an experience that other social-media companies like YouTube have struggled to stop.

When three-year-old Kali Porter decided she wanted a bouncy ball from the claw machine, she first tried the direct approach, attempting to grab it on her own. But when she couldn’t fit inside the machine herself, she called for backup. That’s how Alivia “Tinky” Porter, Kali’s two-year-old cousin, ended up getting stuck in the claw machine at the Billy Beez fun center in the Destiny USA mall in Syracuse.

Grandmother Jackie Perez said, “Seeing the balls inside the machine was like a trigger for them. It only took one second and they were gone. My grandkids are very adventurous.”

When Kali came to report Alivia’s predicament, Perez was almost impressed. “I thought she might be like halfway stuck. But when we got there her whole body was in it. If someone put a quarter in the machine, they could have used the claw to pick her up.”

Eventually first responders were dispatched, and within ten minutes of arriving on scene, firefighters had pried open the door, retrieved Alivia, and deposited her into her grandmother’s waiting arms. Perez said, “They worked so fast. Everyone was in great spirits. I wasn’t scared at all. When they got Tinky out it was like the firemen won a prize.”

After spending almost fifteen minutes inside the glass claw machine, Perez said that her granddaughter Alivia was still in good spirits. “She hasn’t had any bad reactions. I actually think she enjoyed it.”

Less enthused was Kali. Upon Alivia’s release from the claw machine, Kali had only one question for her cousin: “Where is the ball?”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sin is attractive and can lure us into embarrassing or dangerous situations if we yield to it. Before we know it, we are trapped. Nevertheless, God is faithful to save and can deliver us from temptations, even those of our own making.

In Greek mythology, ancient sailors faced many dangers at sea. One of the most unusual was that of the sirens who used their mesmerizing songs to lure sailors to their deaths on the rocky shore. Two famous Greeks were able to sail by them successfully.

One was Odysseus, who stopped up the ears of his men with wax and then had his men tie him to the ship’s mast. This way his men were safe, and he was able to hear the siren’s sweet song with relatively little harm.

The other was the legendary Orpheus who was sailing with Jason and the Argonauts. As they approached the sirens and began to hear the siren’s voices drift across the water, Orpheus took out his lyre and began to sing an even more charming melody to the men.

Orpheus, not Odysseus, represents the success we want. We can pass some tests by restricting our bodies (be tied to a mast) or limiting our access to temptation (fill our ears with wax). But in the end, the holy desires of our heart must rise and conquer. The desire to love and follow Jesus must be a sweeter song to us than the music of the world and our flesh.

In a series of online messages, Brooklyn Nine-Nine actor Terry Crews opened up about his addiction to pornography, which he says "really, really messed up my life."

Some people say, “Hey, man ... you can't really be addicted to pornography.” But I'm gonna tell you something: If day turns into night and you are still watching, you probably have got a problem. It changes the way you think about people. People become objects. People become body parts; they become things to be used rather than people to be loved. ... Every time I watched it, I was walled off. It was like another brick that came between me and my wife. And the truth is, everything you need for intimacy is in your (partner).

We spend four billion hours a year watching porn. Sorry. I've just understated the problem. We dedicated well over four and a half billion hours to watching porn on one porn site in 2016. Humanity spent twice as much time viewing porn in a year as it has spent existing on planet Earth. It all adds up to over 500 thousand years worth of porn consumed in the span of 12 months. Since 2015, human beings have spent one million years watching porn.

One million years.

I'm telling you this not only because it's an interesting bit of trivia … but because these figures are serious. More than serious: staggering, incomprehensible, unthinkable, apocalyptic. All the more so for Americans, because we watch more porn than anybody else on Earth.

Porn is obviously America's favorite pastime. According to surveys, almost 80% of American men between the ages of 18 and 30 admit to watching porn regularly. Nearly 70% of men between 31 and 49 admit to it. Half of men from 50 to senior citizen age also confess to regular porn viewing. 30% of younger men say they watch porn every day. Porn viewership is not quite as common among women, but it's far more common today than it was 10 years ago. Remember, too, this is just what people will admit to doing.

Today, porn grosses more in a year than Hollywood. It also brings in more money than the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined.

Possible Preaching Angles: This illustration functions like the Law—it exposes the sin in our hearts. But it should also point to the availability of Christ’s grace and the support of Christian community.

A little boy only identified as Mason was focused on a new toy in a claw vending machine at a local Beef O'Brady's restaurant. But it was out of reach, behind the glass of the vending machine. So when he saw an opening, he went for it. Unlike most children, little Mason's hastily-devised plan was eventually successful.

In this case, the opening was literal. Undeterred by the glass panels of the claw vending machine where his parents were enjoying dinner, Mason climbed inside, and quickly got stuck.

It just so happened that off-duty firefighter Jeremy House and several colleagues from the Titusville Fire and Emergency Services were also enjoying dinner at the restaurant. While telling patrons nearby to call 911, House and company sprung into action, and within about five minutes, they rescued the boy unharmed, and the claw machine suffered only minimal damage.

A post on the Titusville Fire Facebook page summarized the situation: "Thankfully he was never in any distress as one of our own Lt.'s happen to be there off duty and … made short work of the situation. [Our firefighters] were able to get Mason out in short order with minimal damage to the game. We love a happy ending and are glad everything worked out."

Potential Preaching Angles: 1) Like the Titusville Fire and Emergency Services, the church and her members must be ready to spring into action when people are in peril. 2) Blessings; Rewards - How badly do you want God's blessings on your life? What are you willing to do to obtain wisdom? 3) Sin; Temptation- Sin is attractive and can lure us into embarrassing or dangerous situations if we yield to it.

For years it was assumed that sea creatures ate disposed-of plastics by accident. Now, we know the real reason they eat this literal junk food: because they like it.

According to marine science doctoral student Austin Allen, "Plastics may be inherently tasty," and that smaller ocean animals such as coral and plankton react to them as if they were actual food.

This is in contrast to reactions to more obvious and less edible waste, like sand. According to the New Haven Register, "If the sand came near their mouths, the animals used tiny hairs covering their body to brush themselves clean."

But delicious plastic is a different matter: "The corals scooped the plastic toward their mouths with their tentacles, then gobbled up the trash."

Of course, plankton and coral don't have eyes, leaving them with just their tongues to help them figure out whether or not something is edible. "When an animal tastes something that's when they make a decision whether or not to eat it," according to Matthew Savoca, a researcher. As a result, plastics in the ocean go beyond merely littering a beautiful landscape—they hurt those who unknowingly consume it.

Potential Preaching Angles: This illustration could be used to show the importance of discernment, the temptation to do what "feels right," the lust of the flesh, or our inability to truly know what is best for us without a higher authority's guidance.

In 1987, The New York Times reported on a radioactive contamination accident in Brazil caused four deaths and left 112,000 people with radioactive contamination. Several houses had to be destroyed and the International Atomic Energy Agency labeled it as "one of the world's worst radiological incidents."

The incident began when a private radiotherapy institute moved to a new site and unknowingly left behind a container of radioactive material inside an obsolete unit used for cancer treatments. Two men illegally entered the partially demolished building and disassembled the unit. The container with radioactive material was deemed to have scrap value so they wheeled it home. There one of the thieves punctured a small hole in the container's thick window "allowing him to see a deep blue light coming from the tiny opening he had created."

The thieves sold the container to Devair Alves Ferreira, the owner of a local scrapyard. He "noticed the blue glow from the punctured capsule. Thinking the capsule's contents were valuable or even supernatural, he immediately brought it into his house. Over the next three days, he invited friends and family to view the strange glowing substance."

As Mr. Ferreira and several other workers took the machine apart. … Inside, they found the shiny bluish dust which, they later told doctors, glowed in the dark. Attracted by the pretty powder, several people handled it, examined it, and even rubbed it on their skin. Soon many people became very sick. A medical physicist used a device to confirm the presence of radioactive materials and alerted the authorities.

In his new book 99 Bottles of Wine, David Schuemann of CF Napa Brand Design, spills the industry's secrets about how wine labels trick us into grabbing a bottle off the shelf. In a recent interview on NPR, Schuemann admitted, "We always make a wine look about $10 more expensive than it is. So then it appears like an even better value. We add gold foil to the label or a gold stamping. We emboss the label or add a third dimension to give it a rich texture or tactile feel."

No part of the bottle is wasted for these subliminal mind tricks. Even that little piece of metal at the top of the bottle gets jazzed up with a fancy print, a sophisticated stripe or subtle sparkles. "Then people tend to perceive the wine as more expensive because so much care has gone into even the foil," Schueman adds.

And that label can trick your tongue, too. "We've done some consumer research in which we poured the same wine for people, but from different bottles," he says. "The more they like the label, they more they like the wine." There's actually some real scientific evidence to back up his ideas. Several years ago researchers found that when people think they're drinking a $90 bottle, pleasure centers in the brain are more active than when they're sipping on a $5 wine—even when the two wines are actually identical.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Temptation; Sin; Satan—Isn't this what always happens with temptation? Our sinful flesh or demonic powers slap a label on sin that always makes it look and "taste" better than it actually is.

The classic film It's a Wonderful Life celebrates George Bailey's contribution to his community. George, played by Jimmy Stewart, is a generous and compassionate proprietor of a local building and loan institution.

George offers loans to individuals denied by the bank headed by the greedy Mr. Potter. George helps countless young families move out of Potter-owned rentals and buy their own homes. Threatened by George and his loan company, Mr. Potter invites George to join his company. George sits in Mr. Potter's ornately carved chair, a symbol of Potter's success. A blazing fire roars in the fireplace, and the old miser sits in a wheelchair positioned in front of a massive desk. After offering George an expensive cigar, Potter paints a picture of the struggling life this young 28-year-old man, George Bailey, must have: a young wife, family needs, a business that is always struggling, and a salary of $40 a week.

"What's your point, Mr. Potter?" George asks.

"My point is I want to hire you," Potter responds. "I want you to manage my affairs and run my properties. George, I'll start you at $20,000 a year."

Shocked, George drops his lit cigar in his lap, and his eyes double in size. "$20,000 a year?" he asks in disbelief.

"You wouldn't mind living in the nicest house in town, buying your wife a lot of fine clothes, a couple business trips to New York a year…maybe once in a while Europe. You wouldn't mind that, would you, George?"

Looking over his shoulder, George asks, "You're not talking to someone else are you? This is me, George Bailey."

"I know who you are. George Bailey whose ship has just come in, providing he has enough brains to climb aboard."

George is enticed by the promise of materialistic security, though it would mean relinquishing his family business. Potter agrees to let George sleep on the decision for 24 hours and holds out his hand. As George grips the hand, he pulls back, coming to his senses.

"I don't need 24 hours. I know right now the answer is no. You sit around here, and you spin your little web, and you think the world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn't Mr. Potter. In the whole vast configuration of things, I'd say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider."

Elapsed Time: Measured from the beginning of the opening credit, this scene begins at 1:07:02 and lasts approximately five minutes.

Content: Unrated