A Chinese app that alerts emergency contacts if users don’t check in every 48 hours has become a top paid download, tapping into the anxieties of the country’s growing solo population.
BEIJING: An app with the blunt name “Are You Dead?” has become one of China’s top-selling paid downloads.
The app, created by Moonscape Technologies, is marketed as a safety tool for the country’s growing number of people living alone.
It requires users to check in every 48 hours.
If they fail to do so, the system automatically sends an email alert to a pre-set emergency contact.
The app, which uses a ghost icon, shot to the top of China’s iOS paid app chart by Sunday and remained there on Tuesday.
Its Chinese name “sileme” is a curt phrase translating to “are you dead” or simply “dead?”.
The app’s direct approach has divided opinion among its target market in Beijing.
“I guess as we reach middle age, everyone starts to worry about their own affairs after death,” said 36-year-old office worker Sasa Wang, who saw its appeal.
Official data shows solo dwellers accounted for around one fifth of all Chinese households in 2024, up from 15% a decade earlier.
Others were more sceptical.
Yaya Song, a 27-year-old IT worker, said the app’s name “feels a bit too violent”.
She added that its cost of eight yuan (USD 1.15) felt expensive for a trial.
Student Huang Zixuan, 20, agreed the name was problematic.
“If I wanted my grandparents to download this app, I probably wouldn’t be able to bring myself to say the name,” she said.
Hu Xijin, former editor of the state-backed Global Times, suggested a name change to “Are you alive?” on social media.
He said this would give elderly users “more psychological comfort”.
The app’s account responded it would “seriously look into and consider” changing the name.
This prompted pleas from other users to keep the original title.
“It’s good to face the issue of death,” read the top-liked comment.
