Chinese App for Solo Check-Ins Tops Paid Charts

A new mobile application designed to alert emergency contacts if users fail to check in regularly has surged to the top of China's paid app charts, highlighting growing concerns over solitary living among the nation's young adults.

The app, known as Sileme in Chinese and marketed internationally as Demumu or Are You Dead?, requires users to tap a prominent green button daily to confirm they are alive. If a user misses check-ins for two consecutive days, the app sends an email notification to a designated emergency contact on the third day. Priced at eight yuan, or about $1.15, it has become the highest-grossing paid app on Apple's App Store in China, with downloads spiking dramatically in recent weeks. Developers report a more than 100-fold increase in usage, prompting them to expand server capacity and introduce SMS alerts as an additional feature.

Created by a team of three programmers born after 1995, the app took less than a month to develop at a cost of around 1,000 yuan, or $140. The developers, who operate under Moonscape Technologies, described it as a "lightweight safety tool crafted for solo dwellers" on its English-language page, aimed at office workers, students...