'Mosquitotone' on your kid's phone?

Have you heard about this ringtone yet? Mosquitotone is a ringtone that most adults can't hear, and it's propagating among teen cellphone users wordwide as we speak. Reportedly it all started with a shopowner broadcasting this sound outside this store to repel teen loiterers who apparently were scaring off customers. "The original Mosquito device is a small black box that looks like a speaker and emits pulsating sounds at a frequency around 17 kilohertz -- a range that is audible to relatively undamaged young ears but generally harder to hear for those older than 20," the Washington Post reports. The Post discusses how it went from there to a wildly popular line of subversive ringtones that do a great job of getting back at the original concept. The Post quotes a school security officer as saying he could see it becoming a problem in the fall, when a lot of kids will be "running to the bathroom" to answer their phones, which will be ringing in class under teachers' radar. Here's the New York Times's coverage.