Shaughna Phillips Insists Love Island Age Requirement Should Change

24 May 2024, 11:05

Ex-Love Island star Shaughna Phillips has said that seeing young girls on the show is "creepy" and the age requirement should change.

It's not long now until we all tuck in to an another season of cracking on, pulling people for chats and baskets filled with eggs - as Love Island returns for its 2024 summer series. But after the recent All stars edition of the show, ex-islander Shaughna Phillips has called one aspect of the show "creepy".

Talking to the tabloids, she admitted Love Island All Stars was "incredible", saying it was "the CPR that the show needed", however it seems to have reminded her that there's one detail of the dating show that she really doesn't enjoy.

For obvious reasons she didn't name any specific couples but said: "I don't want to see a 29-year-old boy cracking on with a 19-year-old girl.

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"It's creepy. I don't like it and I don't want to watch it. Maybe the [minimum age] needs to be upped to 21."

Going forward she said the show needs to "branch out and widen their pool". "I'm 30 and I don't want to watch 19-year-olds chatting each other up because, to me, they've not even lived yet - and a 19-year-old is still a child," she expressed.

To be clear, there were no 19-year-olds in the All Stars edition of the show but some viewers did take issue with the age difference between Tom Clare, 24, and Arabella Chi, 33 as well as the age-gap between Chris Taylor, 33, and Sophie Piper, 25.

You're required to be 18 years old in order to apply for Love Island and the youngest contestant on the show's history was in fact 18. 18-year-old Amelia Peters appeared in the third series of the show but didn't garner much attention as she came in for Casa Amor and left two days after.

However Gemma Owen caused a stir when she entered the villa at just 19 years old and coupled up with 27-year-old Davide Sanclimenti for a short period of time. And again, ahead of the 2024 series, the daughter of CBB star Lauren Simon, Gigi Simons is rumoured to enter the villa at just 19 years old.

Shaughna went on: "They need older people, maybe some who have kids. But when they're really young, in my opinion, it's boring. When I was on Love Island I was 25 and I was one of the oldest people, and that's sad."

Restricting the age to 21 years old, like she is suggesting, means the likes of Molly-Mae Hague, Tommy Fury, Amber Gill and many others, who appeared on the show at 20 years old or younger, would have never been able to compete on the show.

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