How Britain became the real Love Island

Telegraph

19 hours ago

Cast your mind back to June 2015, when David Cameron had just won a second term in office and Princess Charlotte had just been born. It was also the summer that 12 scantily clad 20-somethings strolled into a Mallorcan villa in the hope of finding love – and winning £50,000. All while being filmed for TV.
It's been 10 years since the first series of Love Island, and while viewing figures have fallen since the programme's 2019 peak, when six million Brits tuned in, many people will still watch the 12th series when it starts on Monday. A decade of hot tub shenanigans in 'Casa Amor' has brought big changes to the way young people dress, talk, date, and behave. But the show has also reflected the shifts which wider society has undergone.
'I think Love Island is really interesting because its rise in cultural significance happened at the same time as the rise in social media,' says Chloe Combi, author of the book Generation Z: Their Voices, Their Lives. 'The show has held a mirror up to society, and tracked the rise of porn, the growth in online misogyny, how young people feel about mental health and body image.'
So if you're baffled by why young women have artificially fulsome lips and eyelashes reminiscent of draught excluders, or think that someone's been robbed when they say they've been 'mugged off', you might be surprised at just how much Love Island has shaped the nation…
Bodies
Perhaps no other TV show encapsulates the explosion of cosmetic enhancements like Love Island, where gravity-defying boobs and suspiciously full lips are standard among the female contestants. In 2023, 7.7 million people had an aesthetic treatment in the UK – that's 11 per cent of the population.
'Young people will talk about their desire to get a ' Love Island makeover' or a ' Love Island face',' says Combi. 'And although there has been a backlash against skinniness being the ideal over the last decade, and a glimmer of body positivity, I think ultimately the ideal body shape has simply been replaced with equally unobtainable body types.'
The wrinkle-free skin, perfect, white teeth, sculpted cheekbones and honed, deeply tanned limbs tend to be the result of many hours in the gym, dentist and aesthetics clinic.
'I think what has definitely changed over the last decade is that people are more open about talking about the work they've had done,' says Jo Hemmings, a behavioural psychologist who works behind the scenes on reality TV shows. 'Going under the knife or the needle used to be a taboo subject, but the stigma has been completely removed. It will be interesting to see, with the rise of weight-loss injections such as Ozempic, if this year's contestants will be even thinner.'
Over the past decade, it's no longer just women who feel under pressure to have the perfect body. Although the Islanders are randomly tested for all drugs, including steroids, an extremely beefed-up physique became standard for male contestants.
'Young men now face unrealistic body standards too and are bombarded on social media we first time ever their intake is 50/50 young men and women.'
Behaviour
From the outset of Love Island, contestants clearly had an eye on not just the cash prize (or even finding love), but on the lucrative brand deals and huge social media followings that could come from being on the show, and the savviest Islanders ensured they behaved in a way that wouldn't compromise that potential.
Interestingly, the richest Love Island contestant ever is boxer Tommy Fury, 26, who has an estimated worth of £10 million thanks to his high-profile boxing matches and brand deals with the likes of Marks & Spencer. He teamed up with Molly-Mae Hague from day five. They stuck together as a couple until the end of the series, and then remained a pair once out of the villa.
'I think the audience accepts that what they're seeing on the show is a performance, and this definitely reflects life on social media for all of us,' says Hemmings. 'The boundaries between what is private and what is performative have completely blurred. There's a transactional element to relationships that I think young people experience, too. They wonder: 'How will this look to other people?' and 'How will this affect my social capital?''
This transactional, pragmatic approach to love that's seen on Love Island extends to Gen Z as a whole. 'I think both Gen Z and millennials are quite disenchanted by relationships,' says Combi. Although we may read statistics about the rise in polyamorous relationships and more fluid attitudes to sexuality, it seems we all still want the 'Happily Ever After'. According to a recent survey, 75 per cent of Gen Z want to get married, and 69 per cent want to start a family. 'Look at the popularity of Molly-Mae and Tommy,' says Hemmings. 'A lot of people bought into their traditional milestones of buying the big house, having a baby, getting engaged.'
Lingo
'I think the language used on the show is arguably where it's had the most impact on society,' says Combi. 'Phrases such as 'he's giving me the ick' [when you're instantly repelled by someone] or 'she's mugging me off' [to treat someone badly] have become common parlance for whole generations of people because of Love Island. The way we talk is a huge reflection of our belief systems and the way we see the world.'
'Even quite complex psychological terms such as 'gaslighting' [psychological manipulation] have been made mainstream thanks to contestants describing 'toxic behaviour' on Love Island,' says Hemmings. 'I think the feelings and behaviour that are being described have always existed but now young people have a language to name them. I think the show has helped people – especially young men - find a way to talk about their feelings more.'
Other terms popularised by the show include 'pied' [to be dumped] and 'melt' [liking someone so much that you don't mind embarrassing yourself to prove it]. In 2024, 'the ick' was added to the Cambridge Dictionary.
Mental health
Over the past 10 years, Love Island has periodically been held up as an example of the damaging effects of reality TV on mental health, after the suicides of two former contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike ­Thalassitis, as well as its presenter, Caroline Flack.
'I think what happened with Love Island has changed the way TV shows like this are made, with duty-of-care protocols including pre-show psychological assessments, and proper training for contestants on the impacts of being on the show and what can happen afterwards,' says Hemmings. 'We've seen this change in society too, with mental health being much more talked about now and strategies in place in most workplaces for helping people.'
The prevalence of mental health issues on the show reflects the high rates of depression and anxiety among Gen Z as a whole. One in three 18-to-24-year-olds now report they have experienced a common mental health problem, such as depression or anxiety disorder, compared with one in four in 2000.
'Young people are highly aware of mental health issues and have the language to talk about them, but perhaps not the coping skills to deal with them,' says Combi. 'Greater awareness of mental health doesn't always lead to better outcomes.'
Boozing
'In the early days of the show, producers often relied on that old reality TV staple when things get boring – wheeling out the drinks trolley,' says Hemmings. 'But that doesn't happen any more, there's much more awareness of duty of care. Producers on Love Island set limits of two drinks per night, and most contestants don't drink alcohol at all, as young people are drinking less.'
The decline in the Islanders getting tipsy on the show mirrors the changing attitude to booze among Gen Z in particular, and Brits more generally. A recent survey found that nearly half of young people and one in every three middle-aged Britons no longer drink alcohol, with health concerns being the number one reason why.
'For younger generations, getting drunk has completely lost its cool, outlaw image,' says Combi. 'They prefer to stay home and socialise rather than go out clubbing.'
The figures bear it out. According to the BBC, in the last five years, around 400 clubs have closed in Britain – and that's more than a third of the total number. Furthermore, the British Beer and Pub Association says that 300 pubs in England and Wales closed last year alone – that's six a week.
Sex
In its early days, Love Island contestants were at it like rabbits, often in front of other contestants. Ofcom received complaints about the amount of sex shown on screen, and former Miss Great Britain, Zara Holland, was stripped of her pageant title after having sex with Alex Bowen on camera.
But by 2018, producers stopped showing anything too graphic and merely suggested what was going on with feet under the sheets or a moving headboard. And in more recent years, there's been nothing to show at all. Couples have tended to wait until they've left the villa to consummate their relationship, and that reflects a growing abstinence among Gen Z, too. In fact, one in four Gen Z adults say they 'never have sex'.
'I think there's a knowingness to Love Island contestants and to young people generally,' says Combi. 'They want fame and money first, and love and sex are side effects.'
Diversity
The UK has become more racially diverse in the past 10 years, and Love Island has too. Although in its earlier series it was accused of tokenism, last year Mimii Ngulube and Josh Oyinsan became the first black couple to be crowned winners.
'I think the show has found it very hard to truly embrace diversity,' says Hemmings. 'They have had black contestants, but not many other races, and there have been contestants with disabilities, but they've been minor, almost invisible ones, such as Hugo [Hammond] who had a clubfoot. And we've never seen a truly plus-size person on the show.'
Chloe Combi says that when the show has tried to chase younger audiences by being more diverse, it hasn't always felt authentic. 'It's interesting that as Love Island has thrown in more different bodies and ethnicities and LGBTQ contestants, its popularity has declined,' she says. 'I think young people can tell that this is a show with sex and consumerism at its root, and the villa is not an inclusive place, so when it tries to be 'woke' it doesn't really work.'