#717 Annoying Tone

I read this article that said British lawmakers are considering banning a device being used on young people that prevents loitering. Apparently, there’s this thing called the Mosquito that emits a high-pitched piercing sound that’s painfully annoying to young folk but can’t be heard by most people over the age of 25.
Since the device was introduced two years back, over 3500 stores, bars, etc have used it to prevent young people from loitering in the area. Those against the device question the motives of a society that would use a low-level sonic weapon on its children.
Oh, I don’t know.
Perhaps the kind of society where the children use tub-thumping monster ghetto blasters hammering obnoxious profanity-laden rap lyrics on its adults.
It’s sonic war out there folks. Battle of the sound systems. Drive down any street and hear the voices of the young—blaring hip-hop, twanging young country, fuzz-busting grunge. What’s a little high-pitched teen annoyer in all that cacophony?
But ya gotta wonder about the science. Who discovered this perfect annoying-to-teens tone? Was it an offshoot of dolphin sonar research? Did some enterprising scientist parse the sound waves of a nagging Mom’s tirade?
“Get up there and clean your room Billy, or you’re grounded. Why don’t you ever pick up your dishes? And your laundry is scattered everywhere. You’re as bad as your father. Do you want to grow up to be a lazy beer-guzzling couch potato like him??
The husband, meanwhile, is well passed 25 and now both physically and constitutionally able to screen out the high-pitched annoying undertone.
Really though. It bears some examination. What would be the evolutionary advantage, in the sense of propagation of the species? You’re so annoyed by a tone when you’re young that you want to vacate the premises and immune to it when you’re older. Immune in the sense that you don’t pay that much attention. Perhaps because by that time you’ve developed some discretion.
What emits a high-pitched sound that would warn away the ignorant young but doesn’t concern adults? Mosquitoes? Keening coyotes? Screeching Momma and Pappa primates making more monkeys?
Hey. Give us some privacy kid...
America, ya gotta love it.