- Are you still alive? How about now? And now?
Are you taking care of yourself? Have you been seeing anyone? When are you coming to visit us?
It can be tough to deal with family members constantly being on your case. Although the overtures usually come from a good place, singles living alone can get tired of a meddling family.
In China, they now have a solution to the problem. A trio of software developers has launched a new app to keep family members in the loop about your well-being.
It’s called “Are You Dead?”.
At its heart, it’s a very simple application. It periodically requires users to click a button to confirm that they are, in fact, alive and well.
Should the user fail to do so, the app will send out emergency messages to designated contacts. They can then check up on the user or call for help if necessary.
You might imagine that most users of Are You Dead? would be elderly people. Yet, China’s young people have embraced the app to put their friends’ and families’ minds at ease.
Yet, the app’s admittedly morbid name has raised some eyebrows and caught the attention of state sensors. It’s now looking for a friendlier title — but its purpose remains to inform people that you’re not dead.
Quick Life Check
The Are You Dead? app has a very simple functional principle. Every two days, it will prompt the user with an unskippable question: “Are you dead?”.
To get rid of the prompt, you must press the big green button projected on the screen. Tap the button, and you can carry on with your continued existence.
If you do not tap the button, however, the app will assume that you may indeed be dead. In that case, it will send a message to your designated emergency contacts, urging them to check on your well-being.
In compensation, the app will charge you 8 yuan (roughly a dollar) for every click. That’ll total to about $15 a month.
Is that price worth paying for your loved ones’ peace of mind? Decide for yourself.
Yes, Mother, I’m Fine
It’s easy to think that Are You Dead? would’ve been designed particularly with older folks in mind. Indeed, it is reminiscent of the alert buttons care home residents might wear on their wrists.
However, according to the app’s three developers, its target audience is young people. And they seem to be right — early in January, Are You Dead? became the most downloaded paid app in all of China.
According to 29-year-old Ian Lu, one of the app’s developers, Are You Dead? provides an answer to a real need. Millions of young Chinese people are moving to large cities hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from their homes, in search of education and work.
“Every country has young people who move to big cities to chase their dreams,” Lu told ABC News.
However, this pattern disrupts centuries of established Chinese tradition. In the past, families in China were very close-knit, with relatives living at most in the next village over.
Now, with people moving farther and farther away, people are finding it hard to cope with the change. Parents and grandparents want to keep in constant touch with their kids, who in turn might find their relentless hounding frustrating.
“It’s unrealistic to message people every day just to tell them you’re still alive,” explained Lu.
Are You Dead? resolves this issue. Parents can rest easy knowing their kids continue to live, while the kids don’t have to pick up the phone every few hours.
‘I Don’t Want to Die with No Dignity’
Yet, there are also those young people who don’t use the app as a way to brush off meddling parents. To many, it’s a vital lifeline — or perhaps a “deadline” would be a more appropriate term.
Moving to a completely new city with only strangers around can leave people isolated from their social safety networks. Chinese social media is full of horror stories of single youths who got sick and died in their tiny apartments, with nobody realizing they were dead until months later.
While many of the stories are exaggerated or fabricated, the unfortunate truth is that this has happened. So, to some young adults, Are You Dead? is a way to avoid such a sad end.
For instance, Shanghai designer Yuan Sangsang doesn’t believe the app can save her life if something terrible happens. But the 38-year-old does believe it can allow her to die with her boots on, so to speak.
“I just don’t want to die with no dignity, like the body gets rotten and smelly before it is found. That would be unfair for the ones who have to deal with it,” said Yuan.
Wilson Hou, also 38, uses the app for a similar purpose. He has a wife and a kid, but he must travel 62 miles away to Beijing for work, staying in a small rented apartment for the work week.
“I worry that if something happened to me, I could die alone in the place I rent and no one would know. That’s why I downloaded the app and I set my mom as my emergency contact,” he said, hoping to spare his wife from the shock of an emergency message.
You Can’t Call It That
Hou also said that he downloaded the app as soon as it was released, because he was concerned that it would get deleted from China’s app stores. And indeed, in mid-January, Are You Dead? disappeared from the internet.
The cause is likely the app’s name. Death is a big taboo in Chinese society, and that’s not just due to government censorship.
Chinese people simply believe that acknowledging death as a concept is trying your luck. This belief goes so far that many buildings in China don’t have a fourth floor because the Mandarin Chinese word for “four” sounds like the word “death.” This superstition is similar to some buildings in the Western world not having a 13th floor.
Indeed, some people on Chinese web had questioned whether the app needed such a macabre name. Now, the developers are looking for a new name to get the app back on the marketplace.
What would you name this app?
Want to read about more strange Chinese trends? Check out our article about how Zootopia 2 started a craze of buying venomous pit vipers as pets.