China’s New Check-In App Gains Rapid Popularity (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Are you dead? Tap to confirm. There's a new app making waves here in China. It was first called Silema, meaning are you dead, but the name changed a few days ago to Dimumu. Its purpose is straightforward. It's a daily check-in tool for people who live alone. So here's how it works. This is the app. This is all of it. And if you don't press this green button after two days, an emergency contact you've pre-selected gets an alert. And then we hope that person checks in with you, potentially visits, just to make sure that you're okay. It recently became the most downloaded paid app on China's Apple App Store. So why is an app like this, created by just three people, suddenly so popular? Well, China's society is undergoing a major shift. More people are living alone, especially in urban areas. Chinese research estimates that by 2030, the number of people living alone in China is expected to reach 150 million to 200 million people.

[00:01:04] Speaker 2: An app or a piece of technology like this can prevent one person from dying alone or from taking their own life. And to have just one small piece of connection, of course, that is a positive.