By Marissa Essenburg | Sports Writer
It’s hard to deny the power of television, and reality TV is today’s cultural epidemic. And if you’re among the rare few who don’t watch, I envy your freedom. Reality TV is an entirely different ballgame.
I promised myself I wouldn’t get sucked into the ridiculousness again. But three weeks into “Love Island” 2025, I was debating Casa Amor betrayals with strangers on social media and doomscrolling until 1 a.m., watching edits of my favorite couples. Reality television is no longer background noise — it’s a full-blown epidemic.
Reality TV almost feels inescapable, shaping trends, language and even values, especially after the 2025 worldwide summer of “Love Island.” It slips into daily life in ways we hardly notice, influencing the slang we use, the fashion we copy and the way we think about relationships.
If you didn’t watch the show, chances are you saw it anyway — chopped into TikToks, turned into memes, or shouted across Instagram explore pages. Its reach goes far beyond the TV screen, bleeding into the way we talk, joke and interact online. Affliction, oversaturation and idolization have transformed reality TV into a cultural norm, particularly among younger generations.
With social media being more influential than ever, schedules dictated by release times and societal trends shaped by shows built on someone else’s life, reality TV has slipped from guilty pleasure to cultural mainstay.
That reality says a lot about us, and the reflection is uncomfortable. These shows reveal more about ourselves than we’d like to admit.
I’ve never been a “Real Housewives” or “Bachelor” stan like many reality TV fans. But this summer, I was a member of the “Love Island” faithful. My friends and I made sure our only plan at 8 p.m. on Wednesdays was to be in front of a TV with Peacock, watching an hour of contestants in bikinis hoping to find love in a space strategically designed for it.
What we may never know, though, is whether the goal is love or the $100,000 cash prize.
In other words, it can feel like a game of fake it till you make it. Some moments are real, some are played for the bit and others are staged by producers to boost revenue. Either way, audiences were, and still are, captivated by the drama, antics and amusement of it all. The trouble begins when the captivation becomes more than just a laugh-or-cringe moment on a screen.
While this wasn’t the first, or even the sixth, season of the hit series, it was the first to feature an almost entirely Gen Z cast. Contestants spoke fluent Gen Z slang familiar to most 14 to 25-year-olds, throwing around phrases like ‘be so for real,’ ‘the ick’ and ‘glazed.’ All meme references that only those born after 2000 would recognize.
As a 21-year-old, I’ve realized how normalized this version of love has become, and with millions of people watching, its influence only deepens. It feeds our generation the delusion that love is supposed to be instant, that slowing down means missing out. It’s a lustful, unbiblical kind of love, far from the way the Lord designed it to be.
For those of us online, chronically or not, the ever-changing landscape of social media spreads like wildfire. One post goes viral, and suddenly half the world is saying or doing something nobody had heard of 24 hours earlier. And it’s not just language.
In a world where you can be anything, people are choosing to resemble the personalities they watch on screen. Setting unrealistic expectations and, often without realizing it, fueling insecurities such as fashion choices, body image and even the kind of water bottle you carry. The influence of reality television, not just “Love Island,” is enormous and undeniable.
It doesn’t always show us who people truly are, but it can push us to recognize and reconsider our own qualities. Maybe you agree, or maybe you think I’m nuts, but as I watched, I began to notice how certain dynamics in the villa echoed in my own life and friendships.
While not the same, the way women on the show rallied around one another, dissecting moments and leaning on friendship to recover from embarrassment or regret, felt familiar to me as a young woman in today’s world.
Even when imperfect, those scenes revealed a truth: women are at their strongest when they stand together.
The real winner of reality TV is not the contestants, but our obsession with watching them. And maybe that says more about us than it does about the shows.
