Love Island’s Demi Jones says sharing potential cancer diagnosis with social media before family was ‘rookie error’

Reality TV star was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in May

Love Island star Demi Jones has admitted regret at posting about her potential cancer diagnosis on social media before telling her family.

In May, the reality TV star, who placed third on the 2020 winter series of the dating competition, revealed that she had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

She had undergone surgery to remove a golf ball-sized lump from her neck, which turned out to be cancerous, with further treatment needed to destroy remaining cancer cells.

Appearing on The Zeze Millz Show on Sunday (6 June), Jones revealed that she hadn’t originally intended to post about her results, but then made a “rookie error” when she first found out the lump could be cancerous.

“I was in shock and I was crying and I went on social media, and I shouldn’t have done that because I hadn’t even told my family yet. I was getting all my family calling me like, ‘What Demi, you’ve got cancer?’... That was the issue I made.”

Asked why she’d chosen to instantly share her diagnosis with her 1.2 million followers, Jones said: “I don’t even know why, I can’t even tell you because my head was scrambled and I was like, ‘Oh my god, guys!’

“I put it up there, then about five minutes later I thought, ‘Oh no, I want to take it off’, but I felt like I couldn’t. Once it’s out there, it out there and I think it would look worse if I then deleted it.”

When the reality star’s diagnosis was confirmed, she waited to post until telling her parents, but admitted that she felt like she had a “duty” to keep her followers updated.