A sure sign of aging is when you have cool ring tones on your cell phone but you can't use them because you can no longer hear them. I've got some great Billy Joel ring tones on my phone, but I can't use them any more because I can't hear them as well as the other ring tones that came with my phone. So instead of hearing "River of Dreams" whenever someone calls me, I now hear "Tone 4" (plus vibrate, for good measure) which sounds a little like La Cucaracha. If there happen to be teenagers around when my phone rings, they look at me like I'm 112 years old because my phone isn't singing "My humps, my humps."
I read in an article today that now teenagers are downloading ring tones that adults can't hear. Students can then receive text messages while in class and the notification ring tone for the incoming message goes undetected by adult ears.
According to the article, as people age many develop what's known as aging ear - a loss of the ability to hear higher-frequency sounds. I think that may have happened to me already.
The ring tone is a spin-off of technology that was originally meant to repel teenagers - not help them. A Welsh security company developed the tone to help shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while leaving adults unaffected. The company called their product the "Mosquito."
A teacher in Manhattan says a colleague played the ring for a classroom of first-graders - and all of them could hear it, while the adults couldn't hear anything.
As if it wasn't difficult enough to keep up with kids, now they're using stealth technology on their phones.....
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