Young Hooligans, Scram!

 

Listen up, young would-be vandals: SonicScreen, a new device designed to keep muskrats and miscreants out of family-friendly spaces could be headed for a playground, park, or schoolyard near you.

The device generates a modulated high-frequency tone that Jay Webber, who has installed these devices, claims can only be heard by people in the 13- to 25-year-old age range. A motion sensor detects your possibly pubescent presence and emits this harmless-but-abrasive signal until you get away from the monkey bars—or wherever you’re not wanted. “For young people, it sounds like 15 or 20 people dragging their nails down a chalkboard,” Webber told the Pioneer Press, a daily newspaper in Twin Cities, Minnesota.

City officials in Hastings, Minnesota, are currently debating whether to buy the $7,000 device, but they aren’t the first in the US to do so. Moving Sound Technologies installed its own version in Washington, DC’s Gallery Place Metro station. It received mixed results and was eventually removed after David Moss of the National Youth Rights Association filed a complaint with the DC Office of Human Rights. There are similar products in the European market such as the Mosquito Alarm, installed in front of shops to discourage loiterers. Youth advocacy critics find the device discriminatory, anti-teen, and an inappropriate strategy. In the UK, a government-appointed children’s commissioner even launched a campaign called Buzz Off, aimed at banning the Mosquito Alarm.

Moss lodged a similar complaint against the proposed SonicScreen installation in Hastings, claiming that the device “lacks precision and can affect a wide variety of innocents,” especially “autistic children and children with special hearing needs.” Children’s Rights Alliance, a London-based youth-empowerment lobbying group set up after the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, reports that these high-frequency soundwaves harm young ears—and that children from 8 to 13 have reported that the sound wakes them up at night.

Installing SonicScreen, of course, is no panacea for loiterers and vandals and fails to address the root ill conveniently toetipped by a technological fix. Vandalism is an expensive local problem and needs creative solutions. Yet, vandalism is by no means limited to teenagers, and the SonicScreen cannot stop the 26 and up age set from wreaking havoc if they so choose. 

In urban areas, public spaces are scarce enough as it is, and youngsters need places away from the watchful eyes of their helicopter parents. Installing such devices may even be an incentive to vandalize—certainly the device, if not everything in the vicinity. In 2004, when I was fined for being too young to sit on a fountain outside a galleria mall, the thought certainly flashed through my mind. In any case, communities had better prepare for teen rebellion if they start installing these gadgets on every street corner.

 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate