Has anyone heard about an application or some sort of ring tone that kids can download to their cell phones that plays a noise that we adults are unable to hear? Apparently the pitch it too high for adults to hear, but kids can hear it just fine. My students (7th graders) in my 4th hour class began telling me about this a week or so ago, and ever since then we have been joking around together over this subject. I initally told them that I thought they were totally making the whole thing up, that there isn't really such a noise out there. One day I pretended that I also had a noise that I could play that only adults could hear, which they enjoyed. They all claimed that they heard my noise, though no one could tell me how it sounded.
Yesterday a student asked if she could play the noise that only kids can hear just to try to prove to me that such an app really did exist. I also was thinking to myself that since I am a young adult, I might be able to still hear the noise myself. I made the decision to take a minute of our instructional time away to allow the girl to take out her phone and play the noise because the suspense was killing me (and it seemed to be an okay time do this, while we were in the transitional time between doing the warm-up and going over the homework assignment). She played it and all the kids made a big commotion over it. Some complained that it was very unpleasant to hear. I couldn't hear it all.
So this really does exist, they were not just pulling my leg. My student told me that the sound can be used as a ring tone and that her and other kids use it to be sneaky about texting when around their parents. They can know when a new text is received by hearing the signal, but adults in the room would have no idea.
All of this made me very curious. I wondered about why adults would create a ring tone that would allow kids to do shady things behind our backs. After doing a little google searching, I found out that these "ultrasonic" ringtones are not a recent development (an MSNBC article from 2006 was calling them "new" back then), and that ultrasonic tones like this were first used as a way to keep kids from loitering in front of stores.
Apparently not all kids find these tones overly unpleasant now, if they are choosing to use them for ringtones.
Here is a link to the article to which I referred:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13274669/
Hi Marie,
ReplyDeleteYes I know about these ring tones. As a 54 year wise man with rock and roll and gun shooting in his past I am very aware there are frequencies I can no longer hear. Coincidentally they are apparently identical to those frequencies my wife's voice.
But seriously, I investigated this "young ears" ringtone phenomena a couple of weeks ago and downloaded the ring tones to my computer. I conducted a non-scientific study with my broadcast club and not surprisingly many of the sample tones I could (honestly) not hear while students in the library could. This shortcoming on my part soon gave way to an unexpected satisfaction when it soon became clear the tones that eluded me were annoying, almost painful to my young charges.....needless to say I have saved those audio files to my desktop for use when I have trouble getting the students attention in the libary...
..the lesson....never....ever underestimate the guile and cunning of old people. :-)
bf