Paid app ‘Si Le Ma’ notifies a chosen contact when users become unresponsive
An application that asks solo dwellers to periodically verify they are okay has reportedly risen to become the number one paid download on Apple’s App Store in China, highlighting increasing societal anxieties fueled by the nation’s swift demographic changes.
The app, called ‘Si Le Ma’ in Chinese (meaning “Are You Dead?” in English), operates as a digital safety check. Downloading it costs 8 yuan, approximately $1.15. Released around mid-2025, its downloads only skyrocketed in early January, as per Chinese media. Users are required to press a button to confirm their safety; if they miss doing this for two days in a row, the app will automatically send a notification to a designated emergency contact.
Its surge in popularity aligns with two concurrent societal shifts: more young Chinese are opting to live by themselves instead of marrying and starting families, while a growing older population is often left without close family care.
One of the app’s three young founders, who gave only his surname Lyu, informed local media the target was young solo residents in large cities, especially women near 25 years old.
These users, he said, were prone 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.”
China marked its third straight year of population decrease in 2024, having ceded its position as the world’s most populous nation to India in 2023.
Falling birth rates, increasing life spans, fewer marriages, and climbing divorce rates are combining to drive a rise in ‘one-person households’, noted Wei-Jun Jean Yeung, a social demography scholar at the National University of Singapore, cited by the Financial Times. She added that the worry is genuine.
Projections from 2021 by the property research group Beike Research Institute suggest China may see up to 200 million single-person households by 2030, meaning over 30% of its population could be living alone.
An independent government study from 2021 revealed that almost 60% of Chinese aged 60 and over resided alone or solely with a partner, an increase of roughly 10 percentage points since 2010.