Teenagers may text each other ceaselessly on mobile phones and post their latest news on social-networking websites, but electronic gadgetry is no substitute for the buzz of hanging out with the gang. Over the past 18 months, however, a different sort of buzz has been used to disperse young people who gather outside shops or public buildings. When Howard Stapleton's daughter was bullied by a group of youths outside a shop in Wales, he invented a device that emits sound at a frequency which is very irritating to people under 25, but inaudible to nearly everyone above that age. Thousands of shopkeepers and local authorities have since bought the devices - called Mosquitoes, because they sound like a very loud insect.

Their indiscriminate effect on all young people, including babies and younger children, has provoked calls for them to be banned. Last year, Scotland's Children's Commissioner, Kathleen Marshall, claimed the devices contravened young people's right to assemble, embodied in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Now her English counterpart, Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green, has launched Buzz-Off, a campaign to outlaw the devices, which he sees as a symbol of "the fears, the intolerance, even the hatred, of the older generation towards the young".

In areas where this increasing hostility between young and old has become a serious problem, shopkeepers who have installed the devices have reported a rise in business, because older people are no longer frightened to go into their shops. Unfortunately, sending youngsters away with an electronic flea in their ear can only drive a further wedge between the generations. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human-rights group Liberty, has described the Mosquito as "a sonic weapon". As with other forms of warfare, employing more sophisticated weaponry only escalates hostilities. Young people have used the principle against adults, downloading high-frequency noises on to their mobile phones and disrupting classes with a sound the teacher cannot detect.

There is another way. Corby, the English town with a famously high proportion of Scots, was once named "yob capital". That has decreased since sports and arts facilities were opened and young people were "made to feel part of the future", according to one youth worker.

Young people intimidating others, causing damage or fighting are part of a serious problem. An interim report from the Scottish Government on the task force on anti-social behaviour set up in 10 areas of Glasgow in 2005 will disappoint anyone looking for a single, simple solution. However, the report found that services to divert young people from antisocial behaviour need to be within a broader youth strategy, because conflating youth with antisocial behaviour has a negative effect. That should cause those who want all young people to disperse to think again.