Someone in your class is wearing glasses that record: what you can know and what you can say

They look like ordinary Ray-Bans. They are, apart from one detail: a camera in the corner of the frame, a microphone and an AI assistant that answers into your ear. This school year the first pair turns up in a lot of schools, and the usual reaction is the worst one available: panic, or pretending nothing is happening. There is a third option, which is knowing how the thing works and having three sentences ready.

What the light does, and what nobody can switch off

• When the camera is active, a white light on the frame comes on: it blinks briefly with a sound for a photo, and stays on for as long as a video is recording. That is the first thing to look at.
• That light has no off switch. Meta says so in those words, and adds that the camera disables itself if it detects the light has been covered or tampered with.
• A clip is 30 seconds by default. In the app that can be raised to 3 minutes (5 on the Oakley Meta Vanguard). Hours of continuous filming it is not.
• Say Hey Meta, look and… and the glasses take a photo and send it to Meta's cloud so the AI can answer. That is a photo like any other: it comes out of the camera and goes to a server.
• Whatever is recorded stays on the glasses until the wearer imports it to their phone. It does not upload itself anywhere.

Three sentences that need no drama

• Are you recording right now? The most useful question there is. If the light is off, the answer is no and that is the end of it. If it is on, now you know.
• I do not want to be in that, please delete it. Short, polite, and every right in the world behind it. You owe nobody an explanation.
• Glasses off in the changing room and the toilets. That is not your opinion: it is what any school will require the moment somebody raises it.

What the rules say, briefly

If you are at school in England, the Department for Education's mobile phone guidance became statutory on 29 June 2026 and applies from 1 September 2026: schools are phone-free by default, and the guidance explicitly extends to other smart technology with the ability to record audio or video. A pair of camera glasses is exactly that. Elsewhere it comes down to the school's behaviour or acceptable use policy, and to the general rule that publishing someone's image without their consent is a problem in most countries. In changing rooms and toilets the protection is total, everywhere.

A school can treat camera glasses the way it treats phones: off in lessons, put away in certain areas, and the same consequence if someone is filmed without permission. What you can ask for, through your form rep, the student council or your parents, is that the rule exists in writing before there is a problem, not after. One line in the policy saves ten awkward conversations.

If the glasses are yours

• Say so before you film someone. The light warns people, your mouth warns them better.
• Show the light when someone asks, without getting defensive. It is your proof that you play fair.
• Off in changing rooms, toilets and anywhere you would not want a camera pointed at you.
• If someone asks you to delete something they are in, it gets deleted. No negotiation.
• And do not aim Hey Meta, look and… at people: that photo goes to a server and does not come back.

If it has already happened, if there is a video of you going round that you never agreed to, do not delete it from your phone: screenshot it with the date, tell an adult and ask for it to be taken down. The exact steps, including what to do if the video has been manipulated, are in the article about deepfakes of a classmate.