In 2005, British inventor Howard Stapleton stumbled across an idea so tremendously ingenious that it spawned an underground viral Internet industry: sounds played at frequencies only people under the age of 24 can hear.
The concept is very basic. As people grow older, they lose their ability to hear at certain higher frequencies. Because of this, there are sounds at frequencies a teenager can hear but a 30-something can’t.
The first idea for practical use that came to Stapleton was that these annoying high-frequency sounds could be used by shop-owners to keep groups of teenagers from loitering. Teenage populations were kept at a distance while adults were able to carry on, oblivious to the existence of the infuriatingly bothersome buzzing noise.
Called the Mosquito, the device was marketed as a teenager repellent in pesky teenager-ridden stores around Britain.
As British teens caught on to the seemingly inhumane public abuse of their youthful ears, a new use was found for the technology that would appear to strike back at the abuse of youth. Inside an unknown high-school classroom somewhere in London, a student raised his hand for the teacher to see.
Called upon, the student claims he kept hearing an awful ear-splitting buzzing noise. The teacher didn't hear it. "Curious," she thought to herself, but she dismissed the student and continued on with her lesson.
Another hand went up. Then another. And another. "What? Do you all hear it now too?" the teacher probably asked, frustrated with the interruptions.
This teacher was subject to an alternative use of Mosquito technology: a ringtone. Students then had a way to set their cell phone volumes on normal instead of vibrate when they were in classes and the teacher couldn't hear it. A technology that was designed to be used for the system was now being used against the system in a clever rebuttal by youth.
Internet fad! Within weeks Web sites were popping up in every corner of the World Wide Web boasting free downloads of this code-named Mosquito Ringtone.
Quickly the technology jumped coasts as the ringtone was found commonplace in many urban high school classrooms.
I remember my own first experience with the ringtone, when a student fessed up to the buzzing noise in class. The teacher was more curious than mad. He played it for the entire class to hear (or not), and the teacher, along with students with a habit of blasting their music too loud, could not hear the higher frequency because of their natural (and sometimes self-induced) hearing loss.
The technology has continued to slowly spread across the Internet, but today is being used against teenagers in school. Lafayette Jefferson High School in Lafayette, Ind., recently purchased an $800 Mosquito machine to play the high-pitched buzzing noise in one of its classroom halls for the sole purpose of annoying its students.
Students loitering in a hallway near the stairs and the elevator between classes were becoming a hazard and preventing administrators from quickly breaking up fights and handling other small crises. To solve the problem, they invested in a Mosquito machine to keep students from continuing to congregate.
To students, the machine is a major cause of headaches, and to administrators it is the perfect inhumane source of ignorant silence.
It is wrong for school administrations and business owners to stereotype against youth. What about the teenagers who walk into shops to buy instead of loiter? How about the students who have the best intentions and simply wish to be able to go to their lockers in peace? Though it comes in a new form, this can be called typecasting, stereotyping, judgement, even prejudice.
In all seriousness, isn't hall congregation in schools a result of poor rules and even poorer enforcement? Set a rule and punish those who break it. Ask loiterers to leave, groups to move along, and customers to buy. You can't solve an age-old problem of natural social tendencies by causing headaches - unless you believe putting a shock collar on a human would actually be humane. It's the same concept.
Check your hearing and download the free ringtone at http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/.
Garves is an opinions columnist and a freshman majoring in political science. Comments can be sent to ben.garves@whitworthian.com.
OPINION: Teens use cruel deterrent to their advantage
Published: Saturday, April 4, 2009
Updated: Monday, April 6, 2009
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