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An app called “Are You Dead?” that checks up on people living alone has become the most popular paid Apple Store download in China, a sign of concerns created by the country’s rapidly changing demographics.
The app, called Sile Me in Chinese, requires users to “check in” by pressing a button. If they fail to do so over two consecutive days, the app sends a message to an emergency contact nominated by the user.
Are You Dead? has gone viral as an increasing cohort of Chinese young people are choosing to live alone rather than get married and have a family. Meanwhile, a growing number of elderly people are being left isolated in their homes without relatives nearby to care for them.
Wei-Jun Jean Yeung, an expert in social demography at the National University of Singapore, said there was a genuine need for apps that assist people living alone.
“As fertility drops, life expectancy gets longer, marriages decline and divorce rates keep going up . . . all of these are creating the trend of one-person households,” Yeung said. “The concern is real.”
China recorded its third consecutive year of population decline in 2024. In 2023, it ceded the title of the world’s largest country to India.
More elderly people are living alone while there are fewer younger people to take care of them, particularly in rural areas that have seen many working-age people migrate to the cities.
An increasing number of young people, meanwhile, are choosing to stay single and live alone or are getting married later and having fewer children.
The percentage of single-person households in China rose to 19.5 per cent in 2024 compared with 7.8 per cent two decades earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
One of the three young co-creators of the app, who identified himself only as Lyu, told local media its target users were young people living alone in the biggest cities, especially young women around the age of 25.
These people were likely to “experience a strong sense of loneliness due to the lack of people to communicate with . . . accompanied by . . . worries about unforeseen events occurring without anyone knowing”, Lyu said.
Many commentators, however, said the app might have greater relevance for elderly people, though the very old living in remote rural areas might struggle to use it.
Yeung at NUS said this and similar apps, such as monitors on fridges and televisions that can sense if they were not being used regularly and then send an alarm to relatives, would become more important as the populations of China and other countries aged.
“Living alone does not mean people need to be lonely but there is certainly that risk of becoming isolated from other parts of society. So there is a need to encourage people to connect and be socially engaged in a community,” she said.
Local commentators praised the app but questioned the use of the word for death in its Chinese name. On Apple’s international store it is listed under the name Demumu.
Hu Xijin, a nationalist columnist, said: “I suggest changing its name to ‘Are You Alive?’ as it would provide more psychological comfort for the elderly using it.”
But app creator Lyu said the present name was not intended to be “bad”. “It serves as a reminder for us to cherish the present,” Lyu added.
