There’s a new craze sweeping across the country – the mosquito ringtone. What is it? The mosquito ringtone is a special ringtone for your cell phone that is so high-pitched that only teenagers can hear it.
It’s well-documented that adults gradually lose their hearing as they grow older, and the first frequencies to go are those in the ultra-high range…usually around 17KHz or higher.
New technology has taken those high-pitched sounds and turned them into a ringtone that only teens can hear, the so-called mosquito ringtone (available here). This, of course, enables teenagers to receive phone calls without parents even realizing that their phone has rung.
In school, teenagers get calls and their teachers are oblivious.
Originally, a company called Compound Security in England made a product called the “ultrasonic youth deterrent”. The idea was to create a device that used high-pitched ultrasonic frequencies that would blast annoying sounds that only kids could hear, preventing them from hanging out in areas where shopkeepers or other adults didn’t want them.
That idea didn’t work to well and it’s now been transformed into the mosquito ringtone. Most people 20 years of age or younger can hear the mosquito ringtone, although one in 100 adults report being able to hear it as well.
If you would like to check it out for yourself, get the mosquito ringtone here.
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