Norway’s capital has taken direct aim at Meta’s push into wearable technology, announcing on Thursday that smart glasses are now prohibited across every public school in the city.
The ban applies throughout the entire school day and at all levels of education, the municipality said in a statement, meaning the restriction covers everything from elementary classrooms to upper secondary hallways and school playgrounds alike.
Oslo officials were blunt about their motive. The move was aimed at preventing children from becoming “extras in Meta’s data collection,” the municipality said, framing the decision as a direct rebuke of the business model behind camera-equipped eyewear rather than a narrow disciplinary measure.
Oslo’s Vice Mayor for Education, Julie Remen Midtgarden, delivered the sharpest language of the announcement. “We politicians must have the courage to be honest about what this is really about: one of the world’s richest companies has launched a product whose entire business idea is to make it impossible to know when you are being filmed,” she said, adding pointedly: “In Oslo we refuse to let our children become extras in Meta’s data collection.”
Midtgarden, a conservative politician, didn’t stop at criticizing Meta; she also took a swing at Norway’s national government. The left-wing government has said it created an expert group as it mulled over regulating such devices and the use of facial recognition in public, but Midtgarden dismissed that approach as too slow for a problem she says is already unfolding in schoolyards.
“The glasses are being sold in Norway today, they are being used in Norwegian school playgrounds today, and the problem is here now. Looking into the issue is not taking action,” she said.
The technology at the center of the controversy is more capable than a simple camera trick. Smart glasses allow the wearer to shoot photos and videos, listen to music, take phone calls, translate signs in a foreign language, project text or maps into the field of view, or interact with integrated AI assistant features that have made the devices increasingly popular but also increasingly difficult for bystanders to detect.
Adding to regulators’ unease, Meta has reportedly developed a facial recognition feature ready to be integrated into its smart glasses, a capability that privacy advocates warn could turn casual wearers into walking surveillance nodes.
Notably, the ban in Oslo’s schools actually went into effect on August 27, but the announcement was postponed until Thursday because of the political truce agreed by the Norwegian parties following the death of King Harald V on 28 August, meaning the policy was quietly operational for roughly two weeks before Oslo made it public.
The move also lands amid a broader national reckoning. Earlier this month, Norway’s data protection authority, Datatilsynet, formally urged the government to weigh restricting where people can use smart glasses, including possible bans in schools and kindergartens, restricting the sale or purchase of the devices, and imposing requirements around profiling and biometric identification.
Separately, Norway’s education minister, Kari Nessa Nordtun, had already asked municipalities and schools nationwide to treat AI glasses the same way they treat mobile phones and smartwatches, though without imposing a new national statutory ban.
Oslo’s move effectively puts the country’s capital several steps ahead of the national government, setting a precedent that other Norwegian municipalities and possibly other European cities watching the smart-glasses debate closely may soon follow.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
Oslo’s smart glasses ban in schools boils down to one core issue: consent and detectability. The real concern isn’t the gadget itself, but that devices like Meta’s smart glasses are built so bystanders, in this case, children, can’t tell when they’re being filmed, recorded, or potentially subjected to facial recognition.
Oslo acted unilaterally, ahead of Norway’s national government, because officials judged the risk to be immediate rather than theoretical.
As AI-powered wearables become mainstream, the fight isn’t just about screen time or distraction; it’s about who controls a child’s data and whether they even know it’s being taken.
