Teenagers today have new ammunition in their fight against adults and authority: hearing loss. In 2005, Howard Stapleton invented the high frequency sound called the "Mosquito" as a way to keep teenagers and other young people from loitering outside stores and businesses. He originally got the idea after his 17-year-old daughter was harassed at their local grocery store by a group of 12-15 year old children. This brilliant idea saw much success after first being introduced because the sound is extremely annoying and borderline painful for the people who are able to hear it. Ironically, teenagers today have turned the focus of this idea around.
In 2008 this sound, also known as TeenBuzz, created by a frequency of about 17.4 kHz, made its way into the hands, and cell phones, of teenagers everywhere. Generally, only people under the age of 25 can hear the Mosquito. This is because a person's ability to hear high frequencies deteriorates with age, a phenomenon known as presbycusis. Many teenagers and young adults have downloaded this sound as a ringtone on their phone, allowing them to receive phone calls, text messages, emails and any other piece of information on their cell phones while in school or other locations where they were not allowed to use their phones without adults, supervisors or members of authority ever noticing.
So, I guess the joke is on you, adults. Your attempt at keeping children from loitering outside of stores ended up giving them one more piece of ammunition in their fight against you.
To see if you are still able to hear the Mosquito noise, click here!
For more information on TeenBuzz visit this link.
I disagree with the application of this technique. If this were regularly used, teenagers could becomed conditioned away from a store or brand by associating it with the high pitched frequency. This, in turn, hurts customer loyalty and business expansion. Looking at this in a purely economic sense of the idea, I can see the as being very detrimental in the long run.