Smart Glasses Are Here, But Is Consent Being Left Behind? Examining The Ethics Of Wearable Tech – AfroTech

Technology is evolving rapidly, but does it come at a cost to consumers and their everyday lives?

Smart home devices and products are taking the world by storm, with everything from equipment in categories like entertainment, security, climate control, and lighting to simple daily conveniences available at the click of a button. 

Let’s just say…not even The Jetsons could have prepared society for the current world, yet many people are adapting right along with the technology, eager to be the first in line to try new offerings.

According to the Pew Research Center, “a vast majority of Americans – 98%– now own a cellphone of some kind.”

With 91% of people in the nation owning a smartphone, the number is up from the Center’s first survey of smartphone ownership, conducted in 2011.

In a study led by Parks Associates during CES 2026 in Las Vegas, it was revealed that smart TVs are the dominant gateway for streaming video in U.S. households, with 61% of U.S. internet households using them as their primary streaming video device.

Now, people are using smart technology in wearable devices, including smart glasses, which are currently the talk of the town.

What are people saying about smart glasses?

Recently, Facebook’s parent company, Meta,  launched a new wearable tech collaboration with Kylie Jenner, sparking mixed reviews on the use of smart glasses. 

Some saw them as a more fashionable approach to the company’s product in the space, which first debuted in September 2021 through a partnership with EssilorLuxottica. 

At the time, the spectacles were branded as Ray-Ban Stories and featured built-in cameras, audio, and microphones that could be used to take photos, record videos, and make phone calls.

Today, Meta’s glasses are considered the most popular on the market, accounting for more than 80% of all AI or smart-glasses sales, per the BBC.

The concern around privacy and the use of wearable tech

Protest collective Everyone Hates Elon had a direct response to Meta’s latest campaign, slamming the tech with posters sprinkled throughout the company’s London headquarters, as HuffPost reported.

“Meta and Ray-Ban’s new AI glasses can be used to secretly record women and young people for sexual reasons. Simply put, that’s abuse,” said the group in a statement, according to the BBC report.

Everybody Hates Elon organizers added, “Meta has spent years tracking us online. Now it wants to track us in the real world too.”

“Meta’s smart glasses represent more than just new consumer gadgets,” Savvas Learning Company  Chief Privacy Officer, Vice President & Associate General Counsel Ryan Johnson told AFROTECH™ Culture. “They’ve become part of a broader shift toward ambient, always-on computing and surveillance, where data collection becomes nearly invisible.”

“From a legal standpoint, two-party consent laws largely govern audio recording and vary by state, but the bigger question is what happens to the enormous volume of incidental data being collected and how it is ultimately used,” he continued.

Furthermore, Johnson explained that if there’s any liability associated with the Meta glasses, it won’t rest solely with the wearer. Instead, he explained that as AI-powered features expand, companies like Meta will face increasing scrutiny over transparency, data retention, biometric inference, and whether users and bystanders have meaningful right to privacy and consent.”

What is the business incentive behind the glasses?

Researchers anticipate that, along with Meta’s versions of the wearable tech and any other companies that wound up selling the products, as many as 100 million people will buy a pair of the smart glasses in the coming years, BBC reports.

Earlier this year, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said that their products are “some of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history,” per The Next Web.

According to Johnson, the business incentive is simple: “More captured data generally leads to better AI models and more personalized services.”

“The policy challenge is simply ensuring that innovation doesn’t outpace reasonable privacy expectations. I don’t think we’re heading toward a world where recording is prohibited, but I do think we’ll see greater pressure for standardized visual indicators, stronger disclosure requirements, limits on secondary data use, and clearer rules around biometric processing,” he added. “However, Meta would likely argue there is not much difference between Meta’s glasses and any other surveillance, like security cameras or even neighborhood Ring Cams.”

In an interview with BBC, a spokesperson for Meta encouraged people to “behave responsibly” when using any technology.

“We have teams dedicated to limiting and combating misuse, but as with any technology, the onus is ultimately on individual people to not actively exploit it,” said Tracy Clayton.

Additionally, the company’s tagline for the wearables is “Designed for privacy, controlled by you.” It also includes a suggestion that people not record those who do not wish to be filmed and that the glasses be completely turned off “in sensitive spaces,” per BBC.

What creators think of the tech

For users like Danyail Lawton, Meta glasses have changed the approach more than they have enhanced a single piece of content, offering more of a first-person, unscripted point of view.

“My goal is capturing content without breaking the moment. As a strategic communications professional working with athletes, sports organizations, and hospitality organizations,” Lawton, who is also the founder and CEO of BoldMoves™ Consulting LLC, told AFROTECH™ Culture. “I’m constantly in environments where stopping to pull out a phone changes the energy, whether that’s at a sporting event, a client’s event, or backstage before I speak. The glasses make capturing those moments more convenient and cuts down on distractions, since I’m not stepping out of the moment to hold up a device. That mattered more to me than any novelty factor.”

When asked about her practices for seeking consent to record people using the technology, Lawton explained that she doesn’t ask those simply passing through the frame, because they aren’t the people she is actively filming.

“My focus stays on the person or the moment I intended to capture, and anything that catches someone else in the frame gets cropped out or phased out before it’s ever posted,” she explained. “That’s a discipline I built early and don’t skip.”

The future of smart glasses

Smart glasses are quickly becoming, if not already considered, the tech industry’s next big thing, and Meta might be leading the wave at the moment, but other giants like Apple are reportedly developing their own version of the wearables.

Snap has reported that it will soon release an update to its smart glasses, Specs, sometime this year. Google initially launched the first iteration of such technology, known as Google Glass (it ultimately flopped within two years of its release due to privacy concerns).

According to the BBC, Meta is reportedly planning to add facial recognition technology to an updated version of its glasses, which means that not only will those wearing them be able to record others, but they will also be able to identify them with the click of a button.