I heard of this a couple of months ago, well to be more precise I’ve not heard it because I’m too old. The Mosquito Ringtone AKA Teen Buzz is a mobile ringtone that only kids can hear.

The tone is 17KHz and as our ears lose the ability to hear high frequencies as we get older it means this ringtone can not be heard by the over 20s. So when you’re teenage years are ending you’ll have to ask your self the question, “Am I getting really unpopular or am I becoming an old git”. I can imagine a bunch of 20 year olds either bragging that they’re too old and cool to hear it or pretending they still can as they ain’t that old yet.

So far teen buzz has a couple of uses:

• Kids can have their phone go off in class without their teacher knowing, not sure about the use of that as they can’t exactly answer it unless they whisper in Mosquito
• Shops can blast out really load 17KHz sounds to deter the hoodies, though I must admit I could see that resulting in a broken window or 2

Have a look here for free ringtones (a site of a friend) but if you can’t hear anything you can’t really complain.