There is a pair of sunglasses in the shops with a camera in it. That is the whole story, really — the rest is what follows from it.
On 31 August 2026 Australia's eSafety Commissioner published a position piece on smart glasses, and asked the companies making them to change the design. It wants faces blurred by default. It wants a recording light that cannot be covered. It wants the camera switched off when the glasses are not on someone's face.
None of this is a ban, and none of it has happened yet. But it is the clearest signal yet from our online safety regulator that a camera has quietly moved onto a surface no parent has a setting for.
The piece is part of eSafety's Tech Trends Converge series. It was first published in August 2026 and last updated on 1 September 2026. Its subject, in eSafety's own words, is how covert recording "has the potential to amplify harmful content and conduct online, including image-based abuse, adult cyber abuse, cyberbullying of children".
The problem eSafety describes is not the camera. It is the disappearance of the cue. Phones announce themselves — someone lifts an arm and points. Glasses do not. eSafety writes that smart glasses "remove visible cues that someone is recording", and that the safety features built in so far "can be easily missed, covered or disabled by users who intend to cause harm".
It is not theoretical, either. eSafety cites a 2024 study of Australian adults in which "17% of smart glasses owners reported using them in a prohibited way", such as recording others without consent or recording where recording is not allowed.
So it asked for five design changes. The two that matter most at a kitchen table: companies "should automatically blur the faces of people who have not provided informed consent", and smart glasses "need a clear and unmistakeable recording indicator that cannot be disabled or easily obscured". It also asked that the glasses cannot record when they are not being worn, and that livestreaming run on a delay long enough for moderation to look at it first.
Because these are not a niche gadget any more. Reporting the same day noted that adoption is "fuelled by cheaper versions sold by retailers such as Kmart". They are a birthday present now.
And because nothing in Australia's social media rules touches them. From 10 December 2025, the law requires age-restricted platforms to stop under-16s holding accounts — eSafety's own page lists Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube among them, with more services self-assessing since. A pair of glasses is not a platform. Nobody has to check anybody's age to sell one, and no account gets switched off.
The child risk eSafety names is mostly downstream. A video taken without anyone noticing still has to go somewhere, and where it goes is the platforms — with the comment section attached. eSafety's cyberbullying page already counts "recording and sharing physical abuse, violence or harassment" as cyberbullying. That is a schoolyard filming with the phone taken out of the equation.
The other one is image-based abuse, which eSafety defines as "when someone shares, or threatens to share, an intimate image or video of a person without their consent". The same covert recording, in a private setting.
Meta's own Australian page for its glasses says the opposite of a shrug: "If the glasses detect that the capture LED light was covered, physically tampered with or destroyed, they'll automatically disable the camera." That is a real protection, and worth knowing.
eSafety's position is that it is not yet enough — that the indicators can be missed, and that the fix belongs in the design rather than in a promise about how people will behave. Both things are on the record. A parent can hold both.
What the pattern says to us is older than smart glasses. The rules follow the platforms. The risk keeps stepping sideways onto something that isn't one — a game, a homework tool, a comment box, and now a pair of sunglasses.
Aunty Bea can't see through a stranger's sunglasses, and we won't pretend otherwise. What we can do is the part that happens after: "Social media bans help. They don't stop grooming in games. They don't stop harmful content disguised as children's videos. They don't stop strangers in private chats. Aunty Bea can't be everywhere your child is. But she blocks what you choose, flags what she can see, and makes sure you're never the last to know." If you want the longer version of where the ban stops, our guide what the social media ban doesn't cover walks through it.
Read next: our guide →
Aunty Bea helps Australian families with what comes next, quietly. You'll never scroll your child's messages in Aunty Bea. You get a plain-English summary of what looked risky, and how to talk about it.
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