Even in an environment where filming (with phones) is common and acceptable, smart glasses can still come off as rude because others find it hard tell if you are recording or not.

To record a video on your phone you need to hold your phone up pointed at the other person, usually not in the same way you would normally use a phone. If you see someone holding his phone steady at face level and pointing at something without making finger movements, you know he is filming. If someone is pointing his phone down towards the ground and scrolling around with his thumb, you know he is probably not.

To record from a pair of smart glasses you just need to look at someone, as you would normally look at any other thing. Yes there will be an LED on, but the person being recorded probably couldn't see it if it is in a bright, busy environment and you are more than a few steps away, plus there will be aftermarket modifications to disable the LED. In short, there is no way you can reliably tell if someone's smart glasses are filming you. You have to assume that worst.

A common fear for younger people has become being recorded and becoming famous in some embarrassing video. I don't see the problem as having gone away.

And they will soon find out that world's make believe. No one I know, and I know hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of people would allow themselves in a room to be recorded surreptitiously.

And yet, the New York Times reports that all the hottest clubs are banning phones on the dance floor. Perhaps in reaction to having lived the downsides of omnipresent social surveillance, the youngest adults in my life are uniformly sober about the perils of oversharing.

Then again, there may be some selection bias at play…

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/nyregion/nyc-nightlife-no...

I'm not sure if you have experience with teenagers, but you’ll quickly realize they are even more resistant to this technology than we ever were. For the vast majority of kids today, this is their worst nightmare. They will reject it even more forcefully than we have.

In Sweden, kids have stopped showering after PE class due to this concern.

The world is not deterministic, and we can shape norms of how we interact with each other. We don't have to accept being constantly recorded just because the technology makes it possible.