Fifth Harmony star Camila Cabello has vowed to keep her love life top secret following the public scrutiny surrounding her first break-up.

The Worth It singer, 18, shot to fame in 2012 when she and her bandmates formed the girl group on The X Factor talent show, but she wasn't quite prepared for all that fame had in store.

She dated fellow pop star Austin Mahone for most of 2014 before they split up, and Camila tells Teen Vogue the experience taught her to not be so open with her romantic relationships moving forward.

"I've learned that I don't want to be as open or public about relationships anymore," she admits. "In my first relationship, I thought I could hold on to the normalcy of just being like 'Yeah, we're dating', just like if it were high school and I was telling my friends. But in high school, there aren’t articles written everywhere when you break up and you don’t have everyone in the school coming up to you and asking what happened or sharing their opinion with you. It didn’t feel like ours anymore, it felt like everybody else’s."

"I love that nobody knows who this song is about and I don’t have to get asked about this guy in interviews," she continues. "After that, I dated other people that nobody even knows I ever hung out with, because I didn’t want there to be any tweets or selfies or pictures of us holding hands, because I wanted it to be just mine and that person’s.

"If there were to be tweets or pictures of us, it would be because I was with that person for a while and the relationship was really special and strong enough."

And Camila also reveals her new single I Know What You Did Last Summer with singer Shawn Mendes, who she was previously linked to but denied dating, was inspired by a cheating paramour.

"Two days before we wrote this song I found out from a friend of mine that the boy that I was 'talking to' was also talking to other girls,” Camila explains. "The line 'can't seem to let you go/can't seem to hold you close' was about that weird period when you find out you’re being played but haven't said anything to him yet and it’s awkward and distant.

"In the song, as the 'cheater', I put myself in that guy’s perspective. A few days after we wrote the song, I told him I couldn’t do it anymore."