Emma Watson Explains How She Navigates the ‘Minefield’ That Is Social Media

She may play a tech up-and-comer who gets sucked into the cult of a powerful Internet company in The Circle, but Emma Watson seems determined to not let her life imitate her art. During a recent chat with Jessica Chastain for Interview Magazine, the Beauty and the Beast star spoke about the pitfalls of maintaining an online presence in a social media-fixated world.

“It’s a minefield! Technology is moving so fast right now,” she said. “Everyone is scrambling around trying to understand what it means to have an avatar, how to live our lives on the internet, what it means for privacy, for citizens of a political universe. I think that we’re trying to find rules now, as we speak, and it’s difficult. But, like everything, the internet is an incredibly powerful force that needs governing—not to restrict our freedom, but to protect people.”

Watson also explained how working on The Circle changed how she relates to the Internet. “It’s not like a dystopian future—it could be tomorrow,” she said of the film. “I set even more boundaries than I had before between my public and my private lives…I love social media, and I love what it can do and how it brings people together, but used in the wrong way, it’s incredibly dangerous.”