China’s singles don’t want to die alone–or low-tech for that matter, evidently.
I guess “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” doesn’t have the same panache as “你死了吗?” (Nǐ sǐle ma?)
Read the rest of the article. It’s morbidly fascinating/fascinatingly morbid.
A little after she got covid in 2021, my then 86-yo mom announced she was going to send an email to me and my brother every morning to let us know she was alive.
“You can’t just send us an email without content,” I said, so since then every day we’ve gotten an email with a brief summary of her health status, or what she’s up to, or whatever’s on her mind.
Kinda the same thing, I guess.
Some mornings the email comes at 7:30, sometimes as late as 9:30. To be honest, the 9:30 emails are concerning (and she once slept in and I went to her house at 10AM, sure of what I’d find, but it turned out okay)
Interesting idea. I wouldn’t have anybody to notify.
Unless you’re a young person with significant health problems and/or lead a high-risk lifestyle, such an alert feature seems superfluous.
If two days have to pass before your emergency contact is notified, that might not even prevent your body being gnawed on by a pet.
I am an older adult who lives alone, and have no relatives within 1,500 miles of me. I got into the habit of calling my daughter every morning after my divorce. It gives me a chance to check in on her and my 12-year-old grandson regularly. If, for some reason, I’m too busy or forget to call her, she will call me by 10 a.m. to verify I’m still breathing. This doesn’t take much effort, and it works for both of us. YMMV.
It is like that story of a guy who went to the same restaurant every day for ten years. After missing his second day, someone from the restaurant went to the guys house and found him on the ground unable to move. The restaurant worker saved his life.
Reminds me of Joyce Vincent, who died alone in her apartment among Christmas presents in front of her TV, and wasn’t discovered for two years. There have been other stories like that. Evidently, the phenomenon has a name in Japan - Kodokushi (the lonely death).
Talk about having a negative attitude! 
it’s an interesting timing dilemma.
You’d like a system that could automatically notify EMS in time to save you or at least prevent extended suffering if your alive but can’t call them yourself. You’d also like a system that avoids the “lonely death” scenario of not being found for weeks & weeks. Folks with pets probably want something that gets help somewhere in the middle; most common pet species can readily survive being ignored for a day or two, but not a week or two.
Those are different missions with different solutions.
I don’t think that is the point of the app. It’s not to save your life, or even your body from pet depredation. It’s just a comfort for anyone living alone to know that, if they die suddenly, that someone will find out fairly quickly and not leave them lying around for weeks or months. Maybe not a lot of practical value, just a comfort.
If I end up living alone, if my husband pre-deceases me, I suppose I will want to have something in place. I won’t want my estate eaten up by pointlessly-continuing mortgage and utility payments, and someone will need to notify Social Security and my pensions to stop making payments (they will claw all that back anyway). I don’t like the idea of leaving loose ends indefinitely.
Look, the dead person won’t be caring. This service is for the peace of mind of the living.
This is one reason auto-payments for regularly monthly expenses is maybe not the best idea. I bet the act of cutting off utilities for non-payment (I guess it’s done manually, or was) the gas company, the water utility or mail carriers have see some dead bodies. And been the reporting party.
I don’t think this is a brand new concept. I feel like I remember hearing about an app that does something similar years ago. No, I don’t have a cite, just a vague recollection of having heard of something like this before.
I would think a problem with apps like this is an elderly person is more likely to develop dementia or similar cognitive issues and just forget to ping the app, producing lots of false positives. It seems it would be better if the app were tied to a motion detector or some other passive method of detecting life.
Body alarms are an old technology. There are pendants and bracelets.
It’s readily available. I think that phone with “big buttons” marketed to the elderly are quite common and they have fall risk capabilities and a big red SOS button. Iphones and some Androids have that capability. My CGM has a kind of fall alert. It would be “urgent low BG alert”. I go down fast if my BG goes low. In essence, a fall alert.
If the person drops dead, it’s not their problem anymore, if you will.
I have a friend who’s a widow. After her husband died, she signed up for an alert system that sends a notice once a day. If the recipient doesn’t acknowledge it, it waits 30 minutes and tries again. If it still goes unanswered, it alerts your contact or the police. If you know you’re going to be busy during the time the alert comes, you can preemptively acknowledge it.It’s cheap peace of mind.
In a similar way, I call my 93-year old stepfather daily to make sure he’s not dead on the floor.
StG
We had a thread about how to do this maybe 5 years ago - finding a way to let people know if you hadn’t checked in for awhile.
It’s not the dead part that’s important, it’s the fallen and can’t get up part. Break your leg or get concussed in the shower too far from the phone and you could lie there for a week. And then die. You don’t have to be old for that to happen. When I was single there was no one that would have checked on me.
On the other hand, I fantasize that, if I am old and widowed, that I’ll set up my house on autopay and such that when I die, no one will find me for years.
On a similar note (technology and aloneness in China)
A new AI trend is sweeping China: “shaming videos” of artificially aged women, designed to guilt adult children into marriage. Using AI filters, creators depict distraught women, purportedly aged 56 to 58, bitterly lamenting their “solitary” lives in hospital settings.
https://cybernews.com/ai-news/chinas-parents-deepfake-pressure-children/
Not only dementia; garden-variety ADHD would render this completely untenable. I personally can’t even take my medication consistently much less remember to click on an app.
My grandmother is 86 and she’s 100% lucid but forgetful as hell.
I’m curious how popular this really is. Not how many downloads but whether it has any staying power.
We have discussed this before here at the Dope.
At the bottom this page right now , Discourse is offering me five suggestions of related threads. (Di we all see the same thing?)
It’s a genuine issue for many people.
This Chinese app in the OP is one of the possible solutions, similar to things mentioned in those threads.