I was recently listening to a podcast on the BBC World Service that discussed a popular app in China called Are You Dead? The premise caught my attention immediately.
The purpose of the app is to reduce the risk of loneliness. Each day, people who have signed up are asked a simple question: are you dead? If they do not respond after one or two days, an emergency contact stored in the app is notified.
It is a stark question, and yet a strangely human one. A check-in. A quiet reaching out.
A stark daily question
The podcast did not stop there. It also spoke about the Tree of Ténéré, an acacia that once stood alone in the Sahara Desert in Niger. For hundreds of kilometres in any direction, it was the only tree. For over three hundred years it served as a landmark, something travellers could orient themselves by. In 1973, it was accidentally knocked down by a truck.
Today, the Sitka spruce on Campbell Island near New Zealand is often described as the most isolated tree in the world.
That image stayed with me.
After listening, I found myself looking the app up on BBC News. The article explained that the concept is deliberately simple. Users are asked to check in every two days by clicking a large button to confirm that they are alive. If they do not, the app contacts their chosen emergency contact to let them know that something may be wrong.
As unsettling as the name first sounds, the intention behind it lingered. It got me thinking about loneliness, and about connection.
The most isolated trees in the world
There is something about the idea of a single tree in a vast landscape that feels visceral. A living marker of aloneness, and yet also of endurance, something that stands, persists, and can be found.
The Tree of Ténéré functioned as a point of orientation. It mattered because it was there. It was known. It could be returned to.
And when it was gone, something was lost that was more than just a tree.
Why we can be “connected” and still lonely
Loneliness has increasingly been described as a significant public health concern, intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and the way modern life is now organised. Many people report feeling lonely, even while living in a world that is more technologically connected than ever before.
We can message instantly, video call across continents, stream content endlessly, and remain contactable at almost any moment of the day.
And yet, many of us feel profoundly disconnected.
Perhaps part of the answer lies in what we mean when we talk about connection. Is connection a phone call? Sitting across from someone with a coffee? Exchanging emails? Meeting on Zoom? A message read and acknowledged with a small digital tick?
Connections can be brief, sporadic, and fragile. Some are sustaining. Others are functional. Some leave us feeling nourished; others leave us feeling oddly emptier than before.
Loneliness across the lifespan
When I think about some of the causes of loneliness and isolation, my mind first goes to older adults, those who may have lost a spouse, retired from long-held roles, or be living in rural communities where contact is less frequent. Unfamiliarity with technology can make digital connection difficult, compounding that sense of separation.
Research from Age UK highlights how later life events such as bereavement, ill health, reduced mobility and digital exclusion can significantly increase the risk of loneliness.
But loneliness is not confined to age.
People who struggle with their mental health can experience a deepened sense of isolation, particularly when they feel they are not part of a community, not part of something larger than themselves. Loneliness can exist in a crowded room, in a busy workplace, or within a long list of online contacts.
Later life risks: bereavement, mobility, digital exclusion
Later life can involve a series of quiet losses that shift the shape of everyday contact, fewer routines, fewer familiar roles, fewer spontaneous encounters.
When illness or reduced mobility enters the picture, the world can become physically smaller. When digital tools are unfamiliar or inaccessible, connection can shrink further still.
Loneliness can arrive not as a single event, but as an accumulation.
Mental health, neurodiversity, and feeling separate
The podcast also mentioned Voyager, the space probe that has been travelling through space for over forty years, transmitting a signal back from some of the loneliest regions of the cosmos. Once a day, it sends a message. A simple confirmation that it is still there.
There is something quietly moving about that. A message sent across vast emptiness, not asking for anything in return, simply saying that it is still here.
When I think about my own experiences of loneliness and isolation, I recognise times when I felt too overwhelmed or uncertain to form meaningful connections. At times, this sat alongside periods of depression and anxiety. At other times, it was shaped by my mental health and my neurodiversity, leaving me feeling different and separate.
Solitude vs isolation
There is, for me, a very real difference between seeking solitude and feeling imprisoned within isolation. Solitude can be chosen, nourishing, even necessary. Isolation is something else entirely. It can feel enclosing, heavy, and uninvited.
I remember a younger version of myself, during the early days of mobile phones, sending out a blanket text message to several people in my contacts list. I would wait, watching the phone, hoping for a response. If there was none, that silence would feed into an already harsh internal narrative about my worth and my place.
That waiting is its own kind of loneliness.
Counselling as a place to be seen
Is it not sometimes our role as therapists to let people be seen? To help people better understand themselves and to form connection, whether face to face or through a digital space?
Connection is fundamental to what we do in counselling and psychotherapy, and yet we know that isolation and loneliness can have serious consequences for both mental and physical health.
Perhaps there is something deeply human about not wanting to be alone. Connection can take many forms. It can be a conversation, a text message, the holding of a hand, a hug. Small gestures that quietly say that you matter.
I sometimes wonder whether, beneath loneliness, there is a fear of being forgotten. Of disappearing unnoticed. Of not being held in mind.
It is in this context that I think about counselling and the kind of connection it can offer. Not as a solution to loneliness, but as a space where feelings of solitude and isolation can be explored safely.
A space where someone can be noticed, seen, acknowledged and valued without having to perform or explain themselves away.
Are you there?
In that sense, counselling can sometimes feel like being asked a question that is both simple and profound.
Are you there?
And being able, perhaps for the first time in a while, to respond:
No. I am not dead.
I am right here.
References and Further Reading
- BBC World Service, Unexpected Elements, “Are you still with us?” (Programme ID: w3ct72xb)
- BBC News, “Are You Dead?: The viral Chinese app for young people living alone”
- Age UK, Loneliness research and resources
Sincerely Yours, Paul
Transparency notice: This post was developed with the assistance of AI and carefully reviewed, edited, and approved by the author.