No, not really. I used an iPhone 4S until last year, running iOS 7. I refused to update iOS because it would have made it slower. It was a great phone and never had any issues with it whatsoever. Sometimes I still use it today and even being used to my new iPhone, I still find the 4S super pleasant to use. Some would say it's a huge security risk, but what exactly could happen? There wasn't anything that sensitive on that phone. If hackers want to steal my photos of IKEA furniture, or my friends' phone numbers, or read my emails in a language they don't even understand, go for it, they'll just be wasting their own time.
I'd rather have a phone that works well, and that I can use, than a phone that is deemed "secure" but that doesn't work and that I can't use for its sole purpose: to quickly get stuff done and then put it back in my pocket. Then again, any iOS version can have huge security flaws, not just the older ones. How many times per week do you read that a new software update brought a security flaw that wasn't there before? Just look at yesterday's Mojave update. It has a new security hole that wasn't there in High Sierra.
Past experiences have taught me that the most common, most likely way I can lose hours of my life is by installing an update that causes all sorts of problems and slowdowns. Not security issues. It's almost a daily occurrence in my life to help people who accidentally installed some update that messed their system up. If I could get paid for this, I would be making a lot of money. This is a much bigger and more common problem than viruses or security breaches, and it wastes much more of people's lives, since pretty much everyone is affected.
There's this obsession with "being secure" but people don't even know what that means. It's just another meaningless term like "sustainable" and "green" that sounds great but doesn't take into account a bunch of other factors.
All in all, if my phone is slow, sluggish, and drains the battery before the day's over, I'm simply not going to use that phone. So at that point, I won't be benefitting from its "secureness".