Why social media platforms and the Harry Potter universe have more in common than you think

There’s a particular scene in the first Harry Potter film which remains firmly lodged in my memory to this day — maybe because it’s an especially poignant moment, but one with a significance which is not immediately clear. In the scene in question, Harry stumbles upon an empty classroom in the castle. The room contains a huge, ornately decorated mirror covered in strange inscriptions. Tentatively approaching the mirror, he looks into it and sees himself in the reflection, flanked by two familiar figures: his deceased mother and father who smile back at him. For a boy who has been deprived of any knowledge or connection with his parents until very recently, what he sees in the reflection is the culmination of everything he feels has been missing in his life. He’s enthralled by it, and understandably so. Harry returns to the mirror for several nights and sits before it, gazing wistfully at the alternate reality on the other side. Perhaps he would have continued to return to the mirror indefinitely had Albus Dumbledore not interrupted his nightly visits and advised him to stay away from the mirror, with the following warning:

“ Many have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen … not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.”

We find out that the mirror is known as the Mirror of Erised and has a dark history. Some who came across it became detached from reality, preferring to obsess over their reflection in the mirror. Others grew unwilling or incapable of comprehending that the vision on the other side was not real.

There are two ways in which we can consider the story of the Mirror of Erised. Firstly, we can think of it wholly as fiction, a figment of a fantastical universe which is completely separate and irrelevant to our everyday lives. Or alternatively, we can entertain the idea that it is a very powerful and addictive thing for people to see in front of them that which they desire most. Maybe when we bring Clarke’s third law into the fold — the idea that advanced technology is in some respects indistinguishable from magic — we can begin to consider the ways in which technology and in particular social media has grown to become a modern form of the Mirror of Erised, a reflection of what we would most like to be.

It’s difficult to deny that social media platforms are a brilliant canvas for self-expression, and this may certainly be what social media starts off as for many of us. We curate an identity online and display the pictures which best represent the person we want to appear as: a model, a traveler, an artist, a fashion icon, a maverick. There’s a rush of autonomy that is associated with the process, as we exercise our freedom to be whoever we want to be online. Just like Harry looking into the Mirror of Erised, we can become the person we’ve always desired to be through the internet. Moreover, this process is increasingly immersive: we are uploading more and more of our lives onto the internet, to the tune of 12 terabytes of tweets per day. We chronicle so many of the customs of our everyday lives — birthdays, parties, mealtimes, milestones — that the very fabric of our lives seems to be adopting on a digital character. Tyler Alvarez of American Vandal phrases it in the following way:

“We’re the first generation that gets to live twice.”

It is apparent that we no longer experience life solely through the physical dimensions, but also on on digital realms and through various online identities. But at what point does forging an identity for oneself online take on an obsessive tone, and is there an element of emotional harm that comes with constantly curating a perfect version of oneself online? How many times have you obsessed over the amount of likes you received on a profile photo, or analysed how many followers you have compared to your peers? This is absolutely not to say that technological services are an utter distraction from reality and we should purge ourselves from them entirely. Rather, it’s a reflection on the fact that it is all too easy to waste hours refreshing the screen, admiring the meticulously controlled version of ourselves which we clinically put in place over time. It’s easy to become consumed by the constant process of forging an online presence: checking your follower count, updating your account on a daily basis, making sure certain people have responded to your posts. I find this cycle to be exhausting, yet intensely addictive. We eagerly sit before the mirror, gazing at the utopic image on the other side. Equally as often, we spend hours perusing the idyllic profiles of other people leading seemingly perfect lives. Sometimes we even try to emulate others’ style on our own profiles, like mirrors pointing at mirrors.

It’s unclear whether human beings are any happier in the information age. Increased technology use is tied to problems in attention and behaviour regulation in teens who are already at risk of mental health problems, but the jury is out on whether technology use aggravates these mental health problems or is simply a marker of them. We tell ourselves that we can lead more meaningful lives through technology, but it can often bring out our most neurotic tendencies and heighten a desperate need for perfection. The Harry Potter series would have been very different if Harry had remained indefinitely fixated on the immaterial figures in the Mirror of Erised. In a similar vein, we cannot allow ourselves to fall through the digital mirror — to become lost in anxious contemplation of a perfect digital existence. It’s difficult to address these shortcomings in social media, but identifying them is a step towards developing new technologies which speak to the human condition instead of underlining our insecurities.