Did you know that there are cell phones which only children can hear ringing? That’s right; it’s possible that there’s a phone ringing in the pocket of a kid next to you and they can hear it but you can’t. That’s because there are certain high frequency sounds that only kids can hear. Ringtones are being created that use these high frequency sounds. The result is that people under the age of 30 can typically hear the phone ringing but people who are older than 30 or who have experienced early hearing loss for some reason are not going to hear the phone ring at all.

An audiologist named Brandy Ness explained in a recent news article what is going on here. We all have hair cells in the ears which allow us to hear high-frequency cells. However the first stage of hearing loss is the loss of the ability to hear those sounds due to damage done to the cells as we age. By the time that we reach 30, we simply don’t hear those high frequency sounds that we used to hear when we were younger. Children who haven’t had their cells damaged yet are able to hear the sounds. The ringtones are created within the frequency that children can hear but adults can’t. You can imagine how unhappy school teachers are with this technological development as kids answer phones that the teacher didn’t hear ringing.