The “Mosquito” is a high-pitched tone generator designed only to be audible to children and teens, and not to adults, in whose ears the nerve cells that detect these high tones have died off.
In Philadelphia, 30 city parks and rec facilities have deployed these anti-personnel weapons under the rubric of deterring “loitering” and “vandalism” (20 other US cities have also deployed these weapons, according to Vancouver-based manufacturer Moving Sound Technologies).
The use of these weapons has sparked a public debate, with Philadelphia City Council member Helen Gym decrying the use of “sonic weapons” in an city that is “trying to address gun violence and safe spaces for young people.” Gym decries “ideas that are funded by taxpayer dollars to turn young people away from the very places that were created for them.”
Part of the debate was sparked by older people whose high-range hearing is still intact; one 27-year-old woman says that she’d had a constant headache since a nearby park installed the weapons.
Mosquitoes have been controversial since their launch in the mid-2000s, with clever teens turning the tones into ringtones that were inaudible to their teachers and other authority figures. They were very popular in the UK, spurring petitions for their removal from public libraries. They came to the USA in 2008.
The weapons have been condemned by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, who said that they violated the rights of children. When the weapons were installed in DC’s Gallery Place Metro in 2010, the National Youth Rights Association had them removed.
These things were everywhere in Tokyo and my 32 year old ass could still hear them (I must have the ears of a child I guess). They are so annoying and I was just trying to do some souvenir shopping. 😔
I just wish kids would be allowed to exist. Everyone bitches about how each generation is becoming more asocial and Internet-addicted and shut in, but literally what other option do they have when every action they do is policed and scrutinized and they’re not even allowed to go out and hang out in spaces spaces designed for them
Edit: I stuck this in tags but I think it needs to be said here. It goes especially if you’re a kid of color. A bunch of black kids in Baltimore were rounded up by riot police because they dared to hang out in Inner Harbor right after school let out for summer and the tourists were all scandalized. They were called a “swarm” and the police union tweeted out to not fall into the trap that they were children, that they were actually criminals, all because they dared to have fun where people could see them