Each night, 22-year-old Anthony Crowe and his long-distance girlfriend sync their schedules to watch “Love Island.” It's their way of staying close and unwinding, even if the show’s version of love looks nothing like theirs.
“Love Island,” one of the most popular dating shows, sets the standard for fast-paced connection, high-stakes drama and nearly flawless bodies. The program portrays the messy reality of dating but can distort expectations of relationships, identity and intimacy.
For many fans, the appeal of the show isn’t the end goal of finding love; it’s the spectacle of watching the drama unfold.
“I don’t think people watch for relationships,” Crowe said. “They watch for drama.”
Crowe, a recent UF graduate, said he enjoyed watching every episode of the latest season of “Love Island,” despite feeling it focused more on drama than connection. The show changed his opinion of dating.
“People nowadays care more about how their relationship is perceived than how healthy it actually is,” he said. “In my opinion, that’s one of the biggest problems with dating today.”
The show holds contestants in isolation for weeks, where they’re constantly on camera and demanded to couple up. The format creates a pressure cooker of emotions, which is unrealistic in everyday life.
“The islanders are isolated with zero distractions,” Crowe said. “They are kind of forced to form these connections and build attraction, because all of their time and attention goes into it.”
Dating becomes more meaningful when individuals prioritize connection despite life’s many demands, like work, family life, bills and traveling, Crowe said. Nurturing a relationship, even with competing responsibilities, can play a key role in building lasting intimacy.
Ava Moran, a 24-year-old UF audiology graduate student, said she learned a lot about her relationship expectations after comparing her love life to “Love Island.”
“The whole idea of being super intimate, super fast with somebody you don’t really know and then expecting that to work out in the real world is definitely difficult,” Moran said.
While Moran watches the show for fun, it still affects how she thinks about her relationships, she said. The show’s popularity means its impact reaches far beyond entertainment; it shapes viewers’ ideas about dating and connection.
“Between the past two seasons, because those islanders are so idolized, people take after their behavior in good ways and bad,” she said. “It has such a cult following.”
For young adults watching the show, forming intimate relationships is a pivotal part of growing up. Peggy Rios, a clinical associate professor of psychology at UF, said creating romantic connections is a huge developmental task for young adults.
“The problem with shows like this is that they sensationalize a very normal human task,” Rios said.
The gap between entertainment and reality can have emotional consequences, she said. Instead of teaching the audience the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships, “Love Island” rewards messy, dramatized behavior because it attracts more fans and views. It can cause viewers to internalize the show’s standards without realizing.
“They’re shows about what could go wrong — and what can be really exciting or traumatizing about relationships,” Rios said. “It creates a non-realistic expectation about what relationships feel like or ought to feel like.”
Internalizing messages presented by shows like “Love Island” causes viewers to compare themselves to the people on the screen. The comparison quietly chips away at self-esteem, creating pressure to measure up to unrealistic standards and fostering insecurity about one’s relationships and self-worth.
“It's not peers that you’re watching,” Rios said. “It’s the ‘best version’ of peers, like really nice-looking people … and that’s not very helpful.”
Over time, the discrepancies between viewers and the cast can leave the audience feeling isolated and as if they’re alone in their struggle to find meaningful bonds.
“Even though people are so connected and watch all these shows, they say they feel very disconnected and very hopeless about their ability to find good relationships,” she said.
Being aware of the unrealistic situations cast members on “Love Island” experience is important, Rios said. Viewers must understand the primary goal of reality shows is to entertain. It can remind audiences that what they see on screen is fiction.
“Reality shows are not about reality,” she said. “They're entertainment. They are people acting, not people actually living out their relationships.”
Contact Isis Snow at isnow@alligator.org. Follow her on X @snow_isisUF.
Isis Snow is a junior sports journalism student and a general assignment reporter for The Avenue. She enjoys reading and working out whenever she has the opportunity.
