Love Island seems to be having a moment this year - but why?

Anthony, better known as "giletslays", is one of many content creators who have been feeding that growth.

He's been making videos about the latest series for his 170,000 followers, and some of his Love Island takes have had millions of views.

Anthony says the real draw of Love Island has always been the discourse on social media.

But to take part you need to be up to date, and a nightly show can feel like too much of a long-term commitment for some.

"Sometimes if people miss a couple of episodes they feel they're too far behind to catch up," says Anthony.

Super-fan Harriet Fisher, who's been watching Love Island since series one, agrees TikTok has become the go-to place for updates.

She says the US version of the show, which has overlapped with the UK edition this year, is "popping off" on the app, and believes this has boosted interest in Love Island overall.

"The way that people are engaging with reality TV and Love Island in general is obviously changing," she says.

"It needs TikTok and social media to survive, to gain viewers.

"It shows that viewers of old can stay engaged, but also get those new viewers in."

But those new viewers are forming a very different relationship with the contestants, Diamanté warns.

Traditionally, audiences have spent whole series getting to know islanders over one-hour episodes.

Even then, contestants have never been shy about blaming selective editing for making them look bad.

But on social media, with character arcs compressed into bite-sized clips, Diamanté worries fans aren't getting the full picture.

"Conversations are being pulled and tweaked so I feel like it makes it even more orchestrated," she says. "It kind of takes the reality out of the reality TV."

Grace Henry, Cosmopolitan's acting entertainment and lifestyle director, agrees that watching the show via social media fundamentally changes the experience.

"We have to be mindful that these are short clips and clips can be taken out of context," she says.

"We're never going to see the full picture of how someone is and things change very quickly in there."

But Grace thinks online notoriety could work in aspiring reality stars' favour - even if it means audiences spend less time with them.

She singles out Yasmin Pettet, nicknamed YasGPT online, as one islander who's been able to connect with audiences this year.

Videos of Yas giving posture lessons have been viewed more than a million times on TikTok and gained tens of thousands of likes on Instagram.

"We will still have those people and we will have a connection to them, but they will just come around differently," says Grace.

"It will be based on viral moments and whether they do something big that becomes a meme or a social media moment."

Diamanté agrees and thinks social clips might even be a better way to build a following than being popular on the series.

As well as reaching more people, she says "more brands are seeing it and that's the aim of the game".

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