It’s like Life Alert — for the young and dateless.
A trending Chinese app is helping combat the nationwide loneliness epidemic by keeping tabs on singletons who live alone to make sure that they’re alive.
The grimly dubbed “Are You Dead?” app requires users to click a giant green button with a ghost on it every two days to verify that they’re still breathing, China’s state newspaper The Global Times reported. If they neglect to check in, the app will email the person’s emergency contact on the third day and inform them that they could be in trouble.
On the English-language site, where it’s officially known as Demumu, developers said they reportedly devised this “lightweight safety tool” to make “solitary life more reassuring.”
“Whether you’re a solo office worker, a student living away from home, or anyone choosing a solitary lifestyle, Demumu serves as your safety companion,” the page describes.
Since debuting in May to little fanfare, the $1.15 single status tracker has taken the digital sphere by storm, becoming the most downloaded paid app on China’s Apple store.
Techsperts attribute “Are You Dead?’s” popularity to the epidemic of people living by themselves in Chinese cities — the fallout from the One-Child policies, rapid urbanization that separated people from their families and other factors, Gizmodo reported.
According to Global Times, the country is projected to have 200 million one-person households by the year 2030.
“People who live alone at any stage of their life need something like this, as do introverts, those with depression, the unemployed and others in vulnerable situations,” said one user on Chinese social media, the BBC reported.
One user, Wilson Hou, 38, who lives around 100km (62 miles) from his family, said he downloaded the singleton tracker so that his loved ones could collect his body if he died.
While he commutes home to be with his wife and kid twice a week, Hou said he has to be away from them for the time being for a project, so he spends most nights on the job site in Beijing.
“I worry that if something happened to me, I could die alone in the place I rent and no one would know,” he said. “That’s why I downloaded the app and I set my mum as my emergency contact.”
However, others were put off by the somewhat morbid name, with some suggesting they change it to “Are You Alive?”
“Death has both a literal and sociological meaning,” said one social media commenter. “If it were changed to ‘Are You Alive,’ I would pay to download it.”
Reps for the firm behind the app, Moonscape Technologies, said they’d be refining the product by “adding a messaging function,” and mulling over people’s name suggestions.
They also pledged to explore similar products that catered to the elderly — a must in a nation where a fifth of the population is over 60.
It’s yet unclear if/when this app is winging its way to the US, which has also been suffering from a severe loneliness scourge, especially among young men.
A new Gallup poll last May has revealed that US Gen Z and millennial men are the loneliest (25%) compared to only 18% of American women in the same age group.
According to the study, one in four American men under 35 feels more isolated than their peers in other countries — including France, Canada, Ireland and Spain.
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