New Ring Tone Popular with Teens
By Susan Tart

The latest teen buzz doesn’t seem to be much more than a buzz. The newest cell phone ring tone can be heard by young people only. It’s a ring tone that's at such a high frequency, adults can’t hear it.

When tried on UNC Chapel Hill students and their parents, the phenomenon proved true. So how does it work? The cochlea in the inner ear has hair cells covering it that pick up high frequencies. As you get older, the hair cells flatten and can pick up only lower frequency sounds. The new ring tone is 17,000 Hertz loud, so most people above the age of 25 can’t hear it.

Students say they can use the new ring tone to text message each other in class, without teachers knowing it. But although it might help students socially, it could hurt them physically. No matter whether people could hear it or not, many seemed to complain of head pressure when they listened for the tone.

Jack Roush is a doctor of audiology at UNC. He’s not sure whether the effects of the ring tone are dangerous or not.

“I don’t think we have a very good understanding of that yet. I mean if it appears to be at a comfortable loudness and it’s not for an excessively long period of time, I wouldn’t think it would be damaging,” said Roush.

More research needs to be done on the effects of the high frequencies, although the research is difficult to conduct when doctors are too old to hear the ring tones.