Hearing Range Test

Age and High-Frequency Hearing — Presbycusis and the 'Mosquito Tone'

Why do high sounds fade first as we age? Research findings and statistics, the story of the 17.4 kHz mosquito tone, and why we don't publish an age-by-age limit chart.

Published 2026-09-26

High sounds fade first

Hearing loss that develops gradually with age is called presbycusis. The US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) states that about one in three people in the US aged 65–74 has hearing loss, and nearly half of those over 75 have difficulty hearing. The World Health Organization (WHO) counts more than 25% of people aged 60 and over as having disabling hearing loss.

Causes discussed together include changes in the inner ear (cochlea), changes in the middle ear and along the nerve pathways, long-term noise exposure, conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and genetic factors.

What the research shows

A Spanish team (Rodríguez Valiente et al., 2014) measured hearing thresholds from 125 Hz to 20 kHz in 645 healthy people aged 5 to 90 and confirmed that thresholds rise with both frequency and age (sounds must be louder to be heard). Among 20- to 69-year-olds, women had lower thresholds than men at 12.5 kHz and 16 kHz.

Routine hearing tests usually stop at 8 kHz, so the 'extended high frequencies' above that (9–20 kHz) are mainly used in research and supplementary tests to look for early changes caused by noise or medication.

Why we don't publish an age chart

The internet is full of charts claiming 'at age X you can hear up to Y kHz', but most don't say how loud the test sound was or what equipment was used. The hearing limit depends on how loud the sound is played, and uncalibrated earphones and speakers can't tell you that level.

So this site doesn't compute age percentiles or an 'ear age'. Instead it shows how your own results change when measured on the same device at the same volume. Measuring under the same conditions a few months apart can help you gauge change.

The 17.4 kHz 'mosquito tone'

The Mosquito, a device invented in 2005 by Howard Stapleton in the UK, is a high-pitched sound emitter designed to disperse teenagers gathering outside shops. Later models had two settings, about 17.4 kHz and 8 kHz, and the manufacturer said the 17.4 kHz sound is generally audible to people under 25. The same sound turned into a mobile ringtone became widely known as the 'Teen Buzz'.

You can hear it yourself with the '17.4 kHz · Mosquito tone' button in the tone generator. Not hearing it doesn't automatically mean something is wrong with your hearing: your earphones may not reproduce that frequency well, or the volume may be low.

Protecting your high-frequency hearing

Sources

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