From solo dining to safety apps, China’s ‘loneliness economy’ is booming

As the number of people living alone in China skyrockets, a wave of products and services is emerging to address the safety, social and mental health needs of the country’s solo-living population, analysts said.

The issue was thrust into the public spotlight earlier this month, when a check-in app called Are You Dead? – or Sileme in Chinese – briefly surged to the top of paid app charts in mainland China and several other markets, revealing the scale of China’s vast and rapidly expanding solo economy.

The app – which has since been removed from Apple’s AppStore in mainland China, but remains available elsewhere under its global brand name, Demumu – asks users to confirm their safety by tapping a button. If they fail to do so for over 48 hours, it sends an alert to a designated emergency contact.

Beyond a viral debate about its provocative name, the popularity of Are You Dead? has underscored a deeper structural shift in Chinese society: millions more people are living by themselves, often far from family networks, in an environment marked by economic pressure and weakening social ties.

For analysts, the app’s significance ultimately lies in how it revealed the scale of that market, which has long been underserved.

“This is a manifestation of collective loneliness turning into structural demand,” said Zhao Zhijiang, a researcher at the Beijing-based think tank Anbound. “Both the public and the market are confronting the loneliness-related safety risks that may sound niche, but are increasingly real.”

Nearly 20 per cent of China’s population were living in a single-person household in 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. By the end of the decade, that figure will have climbed to more than 30 per cent – or between 150 million and 200 million people – according to a report by the Beike Research Institute.

South China Morning Post