Your Ring camera isn’t stopping crime. But it might be making you paranoid.

Doorbell surveillance is undermining neighborly relationships.

In 2022, a father and son in Florida received notifications from their Ring doorbell camera: Someone was at their door. The pair quickly jumped into action, scouring their apartment complex for a would-be intruder. The scene they happened upon was a woman checking her phone in her car. They fired seven shots at her as she drove away.

The woman, who survived, had never approached their door. The person who was captured on camera turned out to be a neighbor dropping off a package that had been mistakenly delivered to his home.

This is an extreme example of paranoia-fueled behavior spurred by home security systems, but it’s part of a larger trend. Footage of alleged porch pirates is regularly posted to community Facebook and Nextdoor groups, and any odd-seeming or erratic action can raise suspicion, especially if you’re a person of color.

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This class of doorbell cameras, which includes Amazon-owned Ring, Google Nest Doorbell, and SimpliSafe, is marketed as a convenient means of seeing who’s at your door, a tool to catch burglars and trespassers and maybe even find your lost dog. In actuality, its uses are often more nefarious. Hundreds of local law enforcement and government agencies nationwide have joined Ring’s social app Neighbors, a platform where anyone, regardless of whether they own a Ring camera, can post a tip about crime or safety in their neighborhood, and where investigators can request footage from Ring users. And doorbell cameras are popular; 62 percent of respondents in a 2025 US News survey said they installed an outdoor security camera at home. Americans have turned their yards and porches into their own tiny surveillance states.

In addition to the obvious legal and privacy concerns, there is scant evidence that doorbell cameras actually reduce crime — but there is reason to believe they are having an impact on our neighborly relationships. Research has shown that knowing we’re being watched makes us subconsciously more aware of others, which, in turn, may make us paranoid. Another paper found “the awareness of being watched can intensify existing distrust, paranoia, and fear.” This suspicion colors how we perceive and interact with each other.

“Being a good neighbor does not mean spying on your neighbors,” Will Owen, the communications director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told Vox. “We do need to change our thinking around neighborhood surveillance and not........

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