Are You Dead? Shifting ideas about loneliness
Earlier this year, the app Are You Dead? went viral in China. Are we more lonely in our technology rich society, or has technology changed our idea of what loneliness means? Evelyn wrote the following blog about this, that was also the introduction to our monthly newsletter.
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Are You Dead? Shifting ideas about loneliness
Earlier this year, the app Are You Dead? went viral in China. The concept is simple: every two days, you check in. If you don't, a notification is sent to a designated contact. The app launched last year. According to its creators it is a response to growing loneliness and the trend of more and more young people living alone - and fear that they might die unnoticed. Shortly after it became the most downloaded paid app, it was removed from the app stores, seemingly under pressure of the government.
A bit of research reveals that technology aimed at combating loneliness is booming. But this trend is nothing new. The telegraph, the telephone, the radio, all arrived with similar promises of banished loneliness. There are also more recent examples: from Facebook's mission of "connecting people", to the introduction of AI as a chat companion, therapist, and even a romantic partner.
And yet, according to some, our technology-rich existence is lonelier than ever. Did all that technology have the opposite effect? You could argue that. The car allows us to live further apart; the television keeps us indoors. The internet and Social Media add another layer on top, locking us into our individual screens and feeds.
In their book Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid, journalists Luke Fernandez and Susan J. Matt offer a different angle on the question. What if it is not loneliness itself that is changing, but our attitude towards it? Are we finding loneliness increasingly undesirable or unbearable, and is this shaping the technology we develop?
By now I had spent a good part of an afternoon reading about technology and loneliness. I returned to the article about Are You Dead? where it all started. What if the app is neither an answer to a loneliness crisis nor a cause of greater loneliness? What if it is a mirror for our shifting ideas about loneliness and what it means to be human in the company of other people?