The Teen Buzz: The Latest on the Mosquito Ringtone

Your teen is sitting at the kitchen table, actually doing her homework, when all of sudden she is having a conversation on her cell phone. You start to wonder if dementia is setting in early. You didn't hear the phone ring. You were right there. Nor did you hear that annoying vibrating sound. Forget dementia - maybe your teen is suddenly psychic.

Don't get to excited and start planning what you are going to buy when your teen picks the winning lottery numbers for you. You are not supposed to hear your teen's phone. This is thanks to a ringtone that has been making its way to the phones of teens for well over a year. It is called the Mosquito Ringtone.

The Mosquito Ringtone is designed to thwart the attention of adults and allow teens to keep up on the latest gossip when their phones are supposed to be silenced.

So what is this ringtone and why can only teenagers use it? The ringtone itself is a high-pitch sound whose frequency is about 17 kilohertz (kHz). It was developed by Compound Security, a security company in South Wales, to help shop owners who wanted to keep teens from loitering around their businesses.

The high-frequency ringtone caught on with teens in 2006 when a Scandinavian teenager copied the high-frequency sound and created the now popular ringtone (source: BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/5077026.stm).

Why do teenagers love this ringtone?

Simple, they can text and chat with their friends without parents or teachers being able to detect it. They can text while they are supposed to be listening to the Civics lecture. They can stay up late when they are supposed to be asleep and still find out what the latest school rumor is.

Why can't adults here this sound?

While dementia may not be setting in early, our ears begin to age around the age of 25. The normal range for hearing as an adult is up to 16 kHz (Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics). Therefore, our ears are just not able to pick up the higher frequencies as well as a teenager's ear. That is what makes the Mosquito Ringtone such a powerful weapon for a teen's covert texting mission.

Is this harmless?

Your teens hearing will not suffer from these high frequencies. The consequences that come with this ringtone are more in the form of academic consequences. While this ringtone is generally used responsibility and mostly for social reasons, there is still the possibility of the temptation of cheating in the classroom.

There are no widespread reports of classroom cheating, but it would probably be a good idea to ask teens to leave their phones at the door when a teacher is preparing to give an exam.

So, do you want to test your hearing and listen to this secret ringtone? Check out www.freemosquitoringtones.org. It has tones at frequencies from 8 kHz to 22 kHz and it will help you determine which high-frequency ringtone you should pick.

I do have one word of caution to any teenagers reading this. Be careful, we all hear differently. I am thirty-something and I can clearly hear the Mosquito Ringtone. You never know how good your parent's or teacher's hearing may be. They might surprise you.