AM I a very bad mother for letting my soon-to-be-15-year-old son watch Love Island?

When I first came across the hit reality TV show, in which a group of over-sexed and under-dressed singletons with teeth the colour of Tippex cavort in front of cameras in a luxurious Spanish villa as they attempt to pair off and compete to be voted best couple for a £50,000 prize, I was horrified.

I couldn’t help coming over all Mary Whitehouse, especially when there appeared to be some movement under the quilts in the bedroom, where double beds are lined up side by side and couples sleep next to each other.

I was watching it with my 25-year-old niece, who has never heard of Mary Whitehouse and has grown up with tawdry, voyeuristic reality TV shows like Big Brother and Naked Attraction as the norm. She appeared nonplussed by the undulating duvets and was more interested in the fact that bad boy Jonny had been nasty to the lovely Camilla: “It’s horrible, how he dumped her, then minutes later he’s snogging someone else,” she said, aghast.

When I discovered my soon-to-be-15-year-old was watching Love Island too, I wasn’t so sure. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you,” I told Albert, who hasn’t heard of Mary Whitehouse either. His 21-year-old brother said I was babying him: “He’s nearly 15, of course he’s old enough. All his friends are watching it and talking about it, he’ll see it anyway.”

And he had a point. Around 53 per cent of 11-year-olds have seen explicit material online and by 14, 94 per cent will have viewed porn, according to research by the NSPCC last year. No matter how hard we try to police our children, these are figures a parent can’t ignore.

So, bearing in mind there wasn’t anything explicit in the episode I saw, I told Albert I’d watch the series, which finished this Monday, with him and see how it went. Trashy though it is, I soon discovered Love Island isn’t about sex, but about the complex nature of relationships and all they entail. From loyalty to betrayal, unrequited love, rejection, adoration, anger, hatred, jealousy and blind devotion, some of the dramas which unfolded wouldn’t look out of place in a Shakespeare play. And all of that was usually before the first commercial break.

To add to the entertainment, new contestants were thrown in to test the strength of relationships, and there were games along the way, with people voted off, lie detector tests and the public deciding which of the impossibly good looking, scantily-clad contestants should go on dates together next.

It was hard not to get caught up in the rights and wrongs of various arguments and disagreements as we watched relationships form and unfold and those involved open up about their feelings. Before long, Albert and I were discussing the possessive and controlling nature of one of the preening alpha males, prone to belittling his girlfriend. Like most adolescent boys, Albert doesn’t open up to me about much. But now, here we were talking about the compromises people make in a relationship and the danger of rushing into intimacy too soon. When Gabby, who we thought insincere, told the lovely Marcel he needed to treat her mean to keep her on her toes, we both shook our heads and declared Marcel should just stay as he is: “It’s good to be a nice guy, Albert,” I said.

The watching cameras exposed insecurities and vulnerabilities, like those of poor, damaged, brittle Montana, who pushed people away because she feared rejection. In the end, she learnt to trust, just a little, while we learnt a lot about the world of modern dating, where “pied” means rejected and “mugged” means being made to look foolish, which happened a lot.

It was impossible for contestants, filmed 24/7, to keep up a facade for long, like when Olivia chose Chris as her boyfriend, but let slip to others she’d rather bed Mike. Then there was the devastated Tyla, who clung like a bawling limpet to boyfriend Jonny as he was ejected from the villa, telling her: “I’ll be waiting for you outside, babe.” But within a few hours, she had coupled up with someone else which, Albert and I agreed, was for all the wrong reasons.

Of course, it’s an unreal situation, and none of those who declared they were in love can truly have got to know each other in the space of a few weeks. But being privy to such modern day courtship and mating rituals, and all the intense emotions involved, proved almost as fascinating as a David Attenborough documentary. Apart from when there were fumbles under the duvets and Albert and I indulged in our own particular mother-and-son ritual: closing our eyes, covering our ears and screaming “Arrgghhhhh!” until we thought it was all over.