From solo dining to safety apps, China’s ‘loneliness economy’ is booming
The viral success of check-in app Are You Dead? has exposed the vast demand for services catering to China’s rapidly growing single population
As the number of people living alone in China skyrockets, a wave of products and services is emerging to address the safety, social and mental health needs of the country’s solo-living population, analysts said.
The app – which has since been removed from Apple’s AppStore in mainland China, but remains available elsewhere under its global brand name, Demumu – asks users to confirm their safety by tapping a button. If they fail to do so for over 48 hours, it sends an alert to a designated emergency contact.
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Viral Chinese app ‘Are You Dead’ addresses growing fear of dying alone
For analysts, the app’s significance ultimately lies in how it revealed the scale of that market, which has long been underserved.
“This is a manifestation of collective loneliness turning into structural demand,” said Zhao Zhijiang, a researcher at the Beijing-based think tank Anbound. “Both the public and the market are confronting the loneliness-related safety risks that may sound niche, but are increasingly real.”
Nearly 20 per cent of China’s population were living in a single-person household in 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. By the end of the decade, that figure will have climbed to more than 30 per cent – or between 150 million and 200 million people – according to a report by the Beike Research Institute.
“Population ageing, the rapid rise in solo living, and Gen Z’s redefinition of marriage and intimacy all point to one thing: the ‘loneliness economy’ will continue to expand steadily,” Zhao added, stressing that it was not a cyclical trend, but “an inevitable outcome of structural social change”.