Gary Lewandowski, a psychology professor at Monmouth University whose research focuses on the science of romantic connection, says adding covert cameras to the mix will only make building trust harder. He says beyond posting for the ’gram, a number of factors could be driving men to do this. The most logical, non-creepy reason may be tied to post-date analysis, in that the glasses can help men identify blind spots around their own behavior.

“A lot of men out there are eternal optimizers. They want better, more efficient ways of doing things, so reviewing game tape allows them to learn from mistakes,” Lewandowski says. “But I do wonder if some are doing it to build a case instead of a connection—why they’re right and the other person is wrong—or to help better identify red flags.” That type of surveillance “makes the date less about getting to know each other and more about fact gathering,” he adds.

This one talks about teen boys using these smart glasses to record girls in their middle and high schools

The video has the distinctive style of the invasive “rizzcam” and other “POV” videos in which self-styled “pickup artists” and other online creators use smart glasses to record themselves harassing women at malls and boardwalks or pestering employees at their place of work for content. But the people in this video aren’t adults. Everyone in the clip — the girl, the boy filming, and hallway passersby — is a teenage student.

A Futurism review found large numbers of videos recorded at middle and high schools using smart glasses — almost always Meta’s AI Glasses, designed in partnership with the eyewear titan Ray-Ban — and shared to social media platforms TikTok and Instagram. Recordings take place in school hallways, cafeterias, and classrooms, and feature interactions with other students as well as with staff and faculty.

Much of the behavior on display is plainly harassment and bullying, often filmed without the subjects’ knowledge or consent and uploaded online to humiliate them further. Strikingly, every single one of the many smart glasses videos we found were captured by teen boys — and their bad behavior was overwhelmingly directed at girls.

Here’s another article talking about the prevalence of men using these glasses to secretly record women.

Zanjani’s experience is the tip of the iceberg. There are entire accounts dedicated to this type of “pick-up artist” content: men whose shtick is stopping women in the street and chatting them up, with the exchange covertly captured on sophisticated smart glasses, such as Meta’s Ray-Bans, and then shared on social media.

The latter two women were both secretly filmed by an American content creator who goes by the name “itspolokidd”. He has 1.6 million followers on Instagram; the content is exclusively videos of him hitting on women in public places. Sometimes the women seem unfazed; sometimes they are unsettled by his full-on approach (he often walks up to them and calls them sexy or beautiful, then starts referring to them as his future wife or the future mother of his children). Even when his behaviour isn’t apparently distressing for the women involved, there is no escape from the comments on his videos, which can range from insulting to sexist to lascivious. In one itspolokidd video, the woman being filmed is standing with a friend, another woman with a shaved head. “What on EARTH is THAT next to her?!” reads one of the multiple derogatory comments.

There are already confirmed cases in which smart glasses have been used illegally. On 6 January, David Williams, 47, pleaded guilty to voyeurism at Warrington Magistrates’ Court after he’d recorded sex with a woman without her explicit consent using a pair of smart glasses. Williams swerved jail and was instead fined £800 and ordered to pay a £320 surcharge and court costs of £85, reported The Telegraph.

But even in the less obviously harmful cases, the End Violence Against Women coalition (EVAW) has flagged other potential safety issues connected to women being non-consensually filmed. Specifically, when the footage of them shared online includes their personal details, such as their location or phone number, says Rebecca Hitchen, head of policy and campaigns. “The safety risks of this are huge, as is the subsequent level of harassment, trolling and doxxing many are subjected to when videos are posted online.”