Are you too old to hear it?

Chris McGinn posted a new blog up on Digital Landing! Read about the ringtone that teens can hear and older folks cannot.

Do you know what Teen Buzz is? If you don’t, you are probably an old geezer like me. It’s a high-pitched frequency ring tone used by teens to receive messages when they don’t want to alert their parents or teachers.

Dubbed The Mosquito because it is similar to the buzz of the insect, the frequency (approximately 17.4 kHz at 85dB) was used by shop keepers in the UK and elsewhere to keep teenagers out of their stores. Now the teens have turned the tables, to use it for their own power.

As we age, our hearing sensitivity to certain frequencies diminishes. There are sounds you can hear at 20 that you simply can’t hear at 40. I downloaded the ringtone and was actually able to hear it (I’m 32) but I think it would be very hard to hear in a busy classroom. My husband (who is only 33) wasn’t able to hear it, but he works with power tools all the time so his hearing is shoddy anyway.