I’d heard some time ago about the teen repellent noise — an ultrasonic tone that teens can hear, but adults can’t due to natural hearing loss as people age, that gets annoying enough to drive teens away.
It was named the ‘Mosquito’ because the sound resembles that of a buzzing insect. And it works by emitting a harmless ultra sonic tone that generally can only be heard by people aged 25 and under. In trials, it has proven that the longer someone is exposed to the sound, the more annoying it becomes.
Crime Reduction Officer Bob Walton elaborated further: “Effectively, it’s a transmitter which sends out a specialised frequency noise which according to the manufacture is particularly audible to young people under the age of 25.
He said: “I’m in my fifties and when it’s turned on all I can hear is a very faint buzz. But I understand from young people who have been exposed to the noise, it is very annoying.”
Amusingly, not long after this started being used, the concept was appropriated and adapted by teenagers for use as a cellphone ring tone that they could hear but that their parents or teachers could not. Clever kids!
Here’s a site that has a selection of a few different ring tones at various frequencies, from 8 kHz up to 22.4 kHz, so you can test your own hearing abilities and see if you’d be able to hear (or be annoyed by) the tones.
My results:
| You are a dog |
|
Or maybe you are a mosquito, you certainly can’t be human. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 21.1kHz |
| Find out which ringtones you can hear! |
Hmm, I got the same result. Here’s another test with which says I can hear up to 22khz:
http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/hearingloss.html
I don’t really trust my 11-year-old speakers to faithfully reproduce the tones, however.
all what off crashing down work woods by year. in a hollow