What do you get when you take a bunch of hot, young single people and plunk them down in villa in Fiji for six weeks with an objective to leave coupled-up for a chance to win $100,000? The possibilities are endless. There’s the potential for love, certainly, but more often there are up-close-and-personal make outs, lots of tears, inevitable shouting matches — what else would you expect? That’s what Love Island USA, which wrapped its seventh season on Sunday night, is all about.
I mean it, these contestants are radiant. All of them glistening with their sun-kissed skin, voluminous hair, pearly white teeth, idealized body builds, prismatic bathing suits and trendy evening outfits. I’d never seen the show before this most recent season, but after scrolling on social media the past few weeks, Love Island became impossible to avoid. I admit, I was intrigued. Fans flooded my timelines as if everyone was in a complete trance that I’d missed out on. For a show that’s been on for several years now, it was shocking to see how rapidly the online fanbase seemed to spread.
So I caved and watched the first episode. It almost felt like the Hunger Games — an arena of people engaged in a ritual that feels uncomfortably personal yet is impossible to look away from.
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen reality dating shows captivate audiences. There’s the entire Bachelor franchise, Too Hot to Handle, Love Is Blind. The Love Island franchise actually started in the U.K. 10 years ago, and the U.S. version is seven years young now.
But what is it about the show that’s made it have such a moment right now? Where do the wide range of viewers — including TikTok-addicted Gen Zers, of course, but also parents and grown-adult men — find common ground? Let’s break down the phenomenon and hear from fans across the country who told me about their love for Love Island.
Breaking Down the Numbers
The Love Island franchise began in the U.K. back in 2015, a spinoff from Celebrity Love Island that lasted just two seasons in 2005 and 2006. In 2018, Australia became the next country to start their own version of the show, and since then, at least 20 countries have debuted their own versions.
While the contestants live together and try to find a partner in the villa, the special sauce of Love Island is that they also go through rounds of “recoupling” ceremonies, where coupled-up partners can stay with their current partner or pick someone new. If you’re left behind single after the ceremony, you’ll be at risk of being voted off the show. Viewers can chime in via the Love Island app to share their votes and pick their favorites.
This season, Love Island USA spent a few weeks ranked as the most-watched streaming reality series, according to Nielsen data. It also racked up a number of other achievements: The premiere’s average audience quadrupled since the show’s debut, with 39% of audience members for this seventh season being first-time watchers. Across Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube, the show generated 54 million social media interactions between June 2 and June 19 alone. Not to mention the 623 million video views it’s gained on TikTok, as of data reported on June 25, which is a 232% increase from last season.
The show also broke Peacock’s mobile viewership and engagement records. Nearly a third of Love Island USA fans are tuning in from mobile devices, like phones and tablets — a testament to a young audience and the determination of on-the-go watchers. The Love Island USA app has amassed over 100,000 unique users per day since the app’s launch in May. And in just the first six minutes of last Tuesday’s episode, over one million viewer votes had come in. So who are these viewers, with rapid voting skills and sheer adoration for Love Island?
The Diverse Fanbase
You can find many of Love Island‘s most fervent fans on social media — if your social media feed is anything like mine — by simply opening any of your apps.
Another component of this that rallied the fans? The live events. Bars all over the country were broadcasting the Love Island USA episodes live throughout this season.
Martha Frias, who is part of the social media team for The Continental Bar in New York, said the venue hosted their first Love Island watch party on July 7. The tidal wave came gradually — by the end of the season, they’d booked out their space for the show’s finale days before it happened.
“The last watch part that we had was insane,” Frias said. “Everybody was screaming anytime something monumental happened. The whole bar was crazy. It was fun to watch.”
She’s a fan of the show herself and has noticed the outpouring of support certain contestants have seen this season. “I feel like everybody sees a little bit of themselves in people on the show,” she said.
Reagan Swindler, a 23-year-old woman based in Florida, started watching the show around the fourth season of the original U.K. Love Island. This season, she was rooting for Amaya Espinal, who ended up winning the show with her partner Bryan Arenales.
“I feel like [this season of Love Island USA] has brought together a cultural moment like we’ve not really had in a long time, especially with shows like Lost,” she said. “It used to be a water cooler kind of show, but now this one is taking that space over just a bit.”
Outside of Love Island, Swindler is not a huge reality TV fan. But for her, there’s something about it that just clicks.
“I feel like it’s more real than a lot of the other TV shows that are out there, and I think it’s probably because of the way it’s filmed,” she said. “It kind of sucks for them because they’re always under pressure, but you’re getting to see pretty much 100% a real person and not somebody that’s just putting on an act for you. I don’t feel like I’m watching anything that’s scripted.”
Ben Swayze, a 35-year-old married father based in Baltimore, who asked us to use his nickname, started watching Love Island with his wife. They began with season 8 of the U.K. version and have seen all of the U.S. seasons. They love watching young people navigate the dating pool, but it’s also a reminder that “there’s no way” they’d ever break up or get a divorce.
“These people are so brave to do this, and it’s so tough, the dating pool,” he said. “I think the genuine connections that are made [on the show], it kind of does take us back to when we first met. We’re constantly almost reliving our fun times, and things that we might have struggled with.”
Swayze also feels that the Love Island has exploded in popularity this season, saying that the last season probably contributed. “They caught lightning in a bottle that year,” he said.
“I think that the producers focused on drama this season,” he said. “That was the number one thing, was to try to get everyone upset at the seat of their bed or the couch. ‘Let’s see what else we can do to turn it up another notch.’ And they just kept putting more fuel on the fire.”
Anne Alexander, a woman in her early 40s based in Texas who requested to use a pseudonym, also took note of the drama that’s seemingly increased recently.
“It really attracted the American audience in a way that the U.K. show wasn’t maybe exciting enough for them,” she said, “and I guess it’s kind of an American thing to do things bigger and louder.”
They’re also aware of the controversies that have come from this season. There’s been an intense level of online harassment aimed at some of the contestants, prompting several messages from Love Island producers as a warning to fans tuning in. In previous years, three individuals affiliated with the show — contestants Sophie Gradon (season 2, U.K.) and Mike Thalassitis (season 3, U.K.), and host Caroline Flack (U.K.) — all died by suicide after being on the show, which called attention to the mental health of reality TV stars.
Two contestants this season were also removed during the show for using racial slurs before filming began. All of this has led to a call for better procedures to improve the show among some of the fans: more thorough background screenings while casting, improving the voting process, returning the show back to the basics to reset the focus on the authenticity of the relationships being built. Love Island is not unlike its other dating show counterparts in this vein — it’s no secret they’ve all faced similar issues. But regardless, the fans remain — hopeful for its future and still eager for more.
And while they wait until its return next year, I turned to the experts for more answers — specifically, if interest in this season has any parallels today’s dating culture.
What the Experts Say
Sam Morris, a U.K.-based relationship coach, shared a few reasons as to why she believes the show’s having such a moment for singles and couples alike. For singles, it administers a bit of hope — for better or for worse.
“We are living in a society where people are lonelier than ever, people are dating and getting nowhere,” she said via email. “Shows like this give those people hope, that better things can happen, that true love is real, they just haven’t found it yet.”
Morris also explained that people often use the experiences of others as a basis for what their life should be like, so when watching a show like Love Island, they may better understand how they feel about being single and learn to come to terms with that. This makes sense, given the level of drama that frequently unfolds — being in a relationship may wind up seeming terrible. But the couples on the show also have their more sincere interactions, which can teach people that sometimes relationship conflict is merely based on timing and compatibility.
The lessons aren’t too different for people who are in relationships and choose to watch the show. For happy pairs, Morris explains, the show may be all about entertainment, but it’s also likely a reminder that even if you think you’re missing out on something in the dating scene, you’re probably not. For those in unhappy relationships, watching a show like Love Island with its never-ending turmoil can be an affirmation that staying in your relationship is easier than leaving and trying again.
“Humans in general like to do the easiest thing, the thing that uses less energy,” Morris said. “Staying in a not-so-great situation is easier than making changes and our brains are wired to look for reasons and justifications. Watching Love Island would give them that justification.”
Dr. Laura A. Fierro, clinical director of Spark to Recovery, an L.A.-based rehabilitation center, explained that shows like Love Island give us a “voyeuristic window” into the dating interactions between young, single people, as they’re often mirroring our anxieties and hopes about relationships.
“By cramming weeks of dating and breakups into a single hour, they feed our need for quick emotional payoffs while reminding us how tricky intimacy can be in real life,” Fierro told me via email. “Add in live voting and social-media buzz, and viewers not only watch but feel they are part of the unfolding story, cheering, criticizing, or passing judicial sentences on contestants with a swipe.”
Ultimately, reality dating shows serve as a lens to how we date today, Fierro said. They capture interactions, conflicts, moods and rivalries that many single people today are familiar with. Compared to its counterparts, Love Island has been such a stand out among these, Morris said, because of how much more behind-the-scenes footage we’re exposed to. Love Island has about 35 episodes per season, which is significantly more than a standard TV series. We have more time to develop opinions about people and couples we like or dislike, or who we may even feel connections toward ourselves.
“Most of us have empathy, so if you saw someone going through something you had been through yourself (live on TV), you would naturally develop a connection with them,” Morris said. “If you had been cheated on and you saw one of the cast ‘exploring’ with someone else, you would feel the anger in your body, because you know what it feels like to be betrayed.”
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