Consent in the Age of AR: Investigating The Comfort With Displaying Personal Information in Augmented Reality

ABSTRACT Social Media (SM) has shown that we adapt our communication and disclosure behaviors to available technological opportunities. Head-mounted Augmented Reality (AR) will soon allow to effortlessly display the information we disclosed not isolated from our physical presence (e.g., on a smartphone) but visually attached to the human body. In this work, we explore how the medium (AR vs. Smartphone), our role (being augmented vs. augmenting), and characteristics of information types (e.g., level of intimacy, self-disclosed vs. non-self-disclosed) impact the users’ comfort when displaying personal information. Conducting an online survey (N=148), we found that AR technology and being augmented negatively impacted this comfort. Additionally, we report that AR mitigated the effects of information characteristics compared to those they had on smartphones. In light of our results, we discuss that information augmentation should be built on consent and openness, focusing more on the comfort of the augmented rather than the technological possibilities.