As lockdown made us all venture into new areas, I decided to give reality TV a go. I began watching shows like 90 Day Fiancé, Queer Eye and I’m currently binging Love Island. After every episode, I found myself compulsively searching up the stars’ Instagram and Twitter handles to see how they had developed after the show. After reading through millions of comments and tweets, I realized how easily influenced millions of watchers can become by seeing one out of hundreds of hours of footage.

Let’s look at the facts; In the past decade, 21 US reality TV stars have committed suicide. In 2010, Joseph Cerniglia, a 39-year-old chef committed suicide three years after he’d appeared on Kitchen Nightmares, when Gordon Ramsay had yelled at him saying, “Your business is about to f*cking swim down the Hudson.” Whilst in the UK, 26-year-old Mike Thalassitis who became titled ‘Muggy Mike’ took his own life two years after appearing on Love Island. Another case was 32-year-old Sophie Gradon, another former Love Island star who also ended her life back in June 2018. It’s important to note that nearly 70 to 80 percent of reality shows are scripted which means these deaths are remotely a result of a third party’s financial gain.

Reality TV episodes have increased to 57% of all television shows that can be found on our screens; it has now become a source of quality entertainment. Our attention spans require action with every blink or else we quit watching. We think we know everything about them since we’ve seen every single moment of their lives, but is that really it?

Reality shows undeniably change lives- not always for the better. We’ve heard three cases in this article out of several detrimental situations. Perhaps it’s the producers’ faults or even the stars’. But let’s look at ourselves. Our thirst for insight into a random person’s life has become unquenchable. We’ve never even met these people yet we’re gawking at their Instagram posts and stories and we make snappy comments about these stars without thinking twice. So it’s time we ask ourselves, ‘Would I really care to watch this if the actors were unproblematic and stable human beings?’. If we thought about this question more often, reality TV may not even exist which is why it’s our decision to make about how we wish to act after seeing a mere quarter of what actually goes down.