Afraid of dying alone? How a Chinese app exposed single people’s deepest, darkest fears

Original article by Amy Hawkins

A few days before Christmas, after a short battle with illness, a woman in Shanghai called Jiang Ting died. For years, the 46-year-old had lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Hongkou, a residential neighbourhood that sits along the Huangpu River. Neighbours described her as quiet. “She rarely chats with people. We only see her when she goes to and from work, and occasionally when she comes out to pick up takeout,” said a local resident interviewed by a Chinese reporter. Her parents long deceased, Jiang had no partner or children to inherit her estate. Her lonely death sparked a debate in Chinese media about how society should handle the increasing number of people dying with no next of kin.

For Xiong Sisi, also a professional in her 40s living alone in Shanghai, the news triggered uncomfortable feelings. “I truly worry that, after I die, no one will collect my body. I don’t care how I’m buried, but if I rot there, it’s bad for the house,” she says.

So Xiong was intrigued when, a few weeks later, she saw an article about an app that had suddenly gone viral, called Are You Dead? She forwarded the news to a WeChat (similar to WhatsApp) group of five fellow childless friends. “I said: ‘This is actually quite practical.’”

The app, which was released by a company called Moonscape Technologies last year, has surged in popularity in recent weeks, at one point becoming the most downloaded paid-for app in China. It took off after it was discovered by users on RedNote, a social media platform that is predominantly used by women. Are You Dead? describes itself as “a lightweight safety tool crafted for solo dwellers”. Its name, which in Chinese is Sileme, is a play on the name for China’s ubiquitous takeaway app, called Are You Hungry? or Eleme.

Ian Lü, one of the co-founders of Moonscape Technologies, says he came up with the idea for Are You Dead? while browsing on Chinese social media. “In recent years, there has been wide and heated discussion about a hypothetical ‘are you dead’ app,” Lü says. “For example, something with features like: if you don’t check in for 48 hours, someone will come and collect your body.” Lü and his partners saw a business opportunity.

The concept of Are You Dead? is simple: users must check in once a day by clicking a large green button. If a user misses two consecutive days of check-ins, the app sends an automated alert to a designated emergency contact.

Part of the app’s popularity may be down to its tongue-in-cheek name, although Moonscape Technologies is now reconsidering the moniker and has invited users to suggest alternatives. But it has also tapped into an anxiety in modern China that a person could be swallowed up by one of the country’s sprawling cities and disappear without a trace.

“This app makes people feel alive,” wrote one RedNote user. It is an “interesting phenomenon that reflects and combats the loneliness of young people today”.

The topic of social isolation feels particularly acute in Chinese cities. Falling marriage and birthrates mean that more people are living alone well into their 20s and 30s. Intense work cultures leave little time for socialising. And many people can’t find a job at all, which itself carries stigma and shame, and can lead to reclusiveness.

In 2024, just 6.1 million couples got married in China, a record low. At the same time, 2.6 million couples filed for divorce. The trend is not unique to China but it has sparked nationwide concern, particularly as the country’s birthrate is also in decline, creating demographic challenges as the population shrinks each year. By 2030, there could be as many as 200 million single-person households, according to Chinese state media.

“People lack a sense of security,” says Xiong, who lives more than 500 miles away from her parents in Henan province in central China. “Most young or middle-aged people aren’t necessarily staying in their family homes – unlike previous generations, who never left their ancestral lands.”

Xiong, who is 43, started to think about the consequences of living alone after a bout of illness a few years ago that forced her to stay indoors for seven days. “At the time I thought, ‘Oh my God, if I died in this room, no one would even know.’ I used to post something on WeChat Moments every day so my parents would know that I was OK,” Xiong says, referring to the app’s public feed. Now there is an app that performs a similar function.

“In modern life, everyone feels lonely,” says Zhao Lu, a clinical mental health therapist based in Xi’an, a city of almost 13 million people in north-central China. “Married people, divorced people, single people.” But as an increasing number of people decide to embrace “new ways of living” and don’t automatically turn to marriage, technology is also becoming a tool to combat feelings of isolation. Zhao thinks Are You Dead? will be helpful, “because if you’re isolated or living alone, that one quick push will help you connect to other people”.

It is not just singledom that makes people lonely. For decades, China’s economic growth was fuelled by people travelling far across the country to find their fortunes in the cities. But in recent years there has been a reckoning with the psychological scars this has caused. In an essay, Xiao Hai, a factory worker turned writer, described his time as a migrant in Shenzhen, China’s southern tech and manufacturing hub: “I was overcome with loneliness – an intense loneliness that submerged through to the concrete floor beneath my feet, splattered over the assembly line, glazed the unfamiliar faces of my co-workers below the fluorescent lights.”

A feeling of isolation in big, anonymous cities is not unique to China. But the intensity of competition and population density in the world’s second-biggest economy means that it is possible to see the psychological effects of the urban crush “on steroids”, says George Hu, a clinical psychologist and president of the Shanghai International Mental Health Association.

“There is not only isolation but anxiety, stress and a sense of helplessness,” Hu says. He points to China’s notorious “996” work culture – meaning workers toil from 9am to 9pm, six days a week – as a major stress factor, especially when coupled with the fact that the rising cost of living means that working those long hours does not necessarily guarantee the ability to buy a house or a car – markers that the older generation saw as important milestones in adulthood.

One of China’s hottest buzzwords is “involution”: the feeling that people are working harder than ever, but for diminishing returns. Working long hours leaves little room for socialising or meeting a romantic partner. It’s a feeling that Lü remembers well. Now he is married with a young child and living in Hangzhou, a city in east China famed for being home to many of China’s hottest new tech talents, including AI firm DeepSeek. But a few years ago, the 29-year-old product manager was living in Shenzhen, toiling in an office job that starved him of social connection.

“In Shenzhen, everyone often works overtime until very late, including weekends. You might have no plans with friends and live alone in a closed space. You feel a very strong sense of loneliness and insecurity,” says Lü. His female friends told him that sometimes they felt scared walking home alone at night.

He pondered how he might come up with a solution to this problem. He says he was inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a framework developed by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943. It proposes that after a person’s physiological needs – such as food and water – are met, the next most important need is a feeling of safety.

But aside from providing reassurance, analysts believe that Lü and his all-male business team may have inadvertently tapped into another feeling that is specific to young Chinese women: dissatisfaction with the men in their lives.

The country’s falling marriage rate is largely driven by women. China is still a highly conservative society, and many educated, professional women reject the idea of entering into a partnership where they are expected to be subservient to a man. Although political expressions of feminism are sensitive in China, many women express their independence through their lifestyle choices. It is “feminism with Chinese characteristics,” explains Ivy Yang, a tech analyst and founder of advisory firm Wavelet Strategy, who also dubs the trend “RedNote feminism”.

Many women feel liberated by that choice, but choosing not to embrace traditional family structures can also create a gap in human connection that is now being filled by technology. Yang calls this the “loneliness economy”. She points to the rising popularity of AI companions – a global trend, but one in China that is particularly popular among women looking for the perfect “AI boyfriend”.

The Japanese television series I Want to Die Alone, about a single woman in her 30s grappling with the death of her lonely aunt, was a hit among female RedNote users in China. But psychologists say that people of all ages and genders can suffer from feelings of disconnection. Hu, the psychologist, says that isolation is a factor in the psychological problems of nearly every person who comes to him for treatment.

Hu welcomes the premise of the Are You Dead? app, but he would like it to include a facility for people to call for help earlier. “I wish there was a little bit more complexity to it, a way of adding a couple more layers to say something like, ‘I’m alive, but I’d like some help.’”

The bluntness of the app’s original name has caused controversy, with some people describing it as inauspicious or vulgar. Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, wrote on Weibo: “The app is truly a great idea – it could help so many elderly people who live alone. At the same time, I would suggest renaming it to Are You Alive? It would provide more psychological comfort.”

Last Tuesday, the company announced it would be changing its name to Demumu, a portmanteau of “Death” and “Mumu”, a cutesy suffix that connotes another popular Chinese trend – Labubus. Then on Wednesday, there was another U-turn. In a post on Weibo, the app’s developers wrote that they would be renaming the app again, and invited followers to submit suggestions. At the time of writing, the app’s final name is undetermined, although Lü said he expects it to stick with Demumu for the time being. It has also been removed from China’s Apple App Store, and news articles about the app are being censored for reasons unclear. Lü said it was “not convenient” to discuss the app’s removal, but it may have drawn unwanted scrutiny from China’s internet regulators, who don’t like content that could be viewed as “superstitious”. On Monday, Moonscape Technologies issued a statement warning users against counterfeit versions of the app.

Still, Lü has big plans for the future. He wants to develop a sister app aimed at elderly people, or find a way to use AI so that the app can alert a person’s emergency contact when the user is in a dangerous situation, such as a speeding car.

“I feel what is being reflected is not just this kind of situation in China,” Lü says. “But rather that this new ‘living alone’ group is a global phenomenon. I hope the whole world can pay attention to the safety issues of people living alone.”

• Additional research by Lillian Yang

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.