Refer China: China's 'Are You Dead?' App Addresses Solo Living Safety

App checks on solo dwellers; if no check-in, alerts contacts. Reflects demographic shifts—rising singles & isolated elderly. Aims to prevent unnoticed emergencies. To rebrand as Demumu for global expansion.

China's 'Are You Dead?' App Checks in on Growing Cohort of People Living Alone

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.

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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.

Biao Xiang of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology said young Chinese were brought up to believe that if they single-mindedly pursued their goals, they would achieve success. But this vision has been dashed by a slowing economy and dwindling job opportunities.

Signing up to the app was a way of expressing quiet pessimism, similar to other trends that have swept through the younger generation such as tang ping, or "lying flat", and bailan, or "let it rot" that signal a ceasing to strive in the face of a hopeless situation.

"When they download this app, I would read that as a kind of collective installation art. Actually they are expressing a certain confusion and a certain anxiety," Xiang said.

Many commentators, however, said the app might have greater practical 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.

On the evening of January 13, the team behind the Chinese app announced via its official channel that the app will adopt a new global brand name: Demumu, with the change set to take effect in its next update.

According to its founder, Xiao Guo, Demumu will stay true to its mission of safety and extend this vision globally, offering its China-born safeguarding solution to solo dwellers around the world.

Following its unexpected surge in popularity, the app reached the No. 1 spot on the Apple App Store's paid chart on January 10. Over the next three days, more than 60 investors approached Xiao Guo, expressing interest in funding. Initially seeking ¥1 million for 10% equity, competition pushed that valuation close to ¥10 million.

The app's price has already increased from ¥1 to ¥8, with future plans to raise it to ¥14 or ¥15. As of January 13, it continues to hold the top spot among paid apps on the Apple App Store.

Source: FINANCIAL TIMES, 每日经济新闻