Can you hear me now?

In that old battle of the wills between young people and their keepers, the young have found a new weapon that could change the balance of power on the cellphone front: a ring tone that many adults cannot hear.

In settings where cellphone use is forbidden — in class, for example — it is perfect for signaling the arrival of a text message without being detected by an elder of the species.

"When I heard about it I didn't believe it at first," said Donna Lewis, a technology teacher at the Trinity School in Manhattan. "But one of the kids gave me a copy, and I sent it to a colleague. She played it for her first graders. All of them could hear it, and neither she nor I could."

The technology, which relies on the fact that most adults gradually lose the ability to hear high-pitched sounds, was developed in Britain but has only recently spread to America — by Internet, of course.

Example of the ring tone here:

Funny thing is, I can hear it just fine - albeit a bit annoying. It's odd because I have rock-and-roll ears, and I thought my hearing sensitivity was really bad, not to mention that I'm 39 years old. I'd imagine that I still have really good frequency range hearing, it just takes a bit more volume for me to hear things than other people. Perhaps the frequency range that I can't hear is the same range that stupid people speak in.

That's probably it.