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The app requires users to \u2018check in\u2019 by pressing a button and notifies an emergency contact if they fail to do so for two days \u00a9 FT montage\/Farknotp\/Dreamstime<\/p>\n
More elderly people are living alone while there are fewer younger people to take care of them, particularly in rural areas that have seen many working-age people migrate to the cities. <\/p>\n
An increasing number of young people, meanwhile, are choosing to stay single and live alone or are getting married later and having fewer children. <\/p>\n
The percentage of single-person households in China rose to 19.5 per cent in 2024 compared with 7.8 per cent two decades earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. <\/p>\n
One of the three young co-creators of the app, who identified himself only as Lyu, told local media its target users were young people living alone in the biggest cities, especially young women around the age of 25. <\/p>\n
These people were likely to \u201cexperience a strong sense of loneliness due to the lack of people to communicate with\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009accompanied by\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009worries about unforeseen events occurring without anyone knowing\u201d, Lyu said.<\/p>\n
Biao Xiang of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology said young Chinese were brought up to believe that if they single-mindedly pursued their goals, they would achieve success. But this vision has been dashed by a slowing economy and dwindling job opportunities. <\/p>\n
Signing up to the app was a way of expressing quiet pessimism, similar to other trends that have swept through the younger generation such as tang ping, or \u201clying flat\u201d<\/a>, and bailan, or \u201clet it rot\u201d<\/a> that signal a ceasing to strive in the face of a hopeless situation.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they download this app, I would read that as a kind of collective installation art. Actually they are expressing a certain confusion and a certain anxiety,\u201d Xiang said.<\/p>\n Many commentators, however, said the app might have greater practical relevance for elderly people, though the very old living in remote rural areas might struggle to use it. <\/p>\n Yeung at NUS said this and similar apps, such as monitors on fridges and televisions that can sense if they were not being used regularly and then send an alarm to relatives, would become more important as the populations of China and other countries aged. <\/p>\n \u201cLiving alone does not mean people need to be lonely but there is certainly that risk of becoming isolated from other parts of society. So there is a need to encourage people to connect and be socially engaged in a community,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Recommended<\/p>\n
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