The Danger of Living Alone With No One Checking In

Every year in the United States, about 1 in 4 adults over 65 falls, and the consequences are severe. The National Safety Council reports that roughly 43,000 older adults died from falls in 2024, and fall-related emergency room visits topped 3.85 million in 2023. Strokes add to the toll: the CDC reports that more than 795,000 Americans have one each year, about one every 40 seconds. Those are not abstract numbers. Each one is a person on a bathroom floor, in a kitchen or in a bed, at a moment when help isn't in the room.

What makes living alone so risky is what happens next. A Cambridge University study of people over 90 found that about a third of those who fell stayed on the floor for an hour or more. Most of their falls happened when they were alone, and the call alarms available to them were rarely used during those long waits. Long waits were linked to serious injury, hospital admission and later moves into long-term care. Many people picture an emergency as something they would deal with on the spot. For a person who has fallen or had a stroke, that may not be possible.

This is a worry for more than parents. Any adult child who lives far from a parent, any family sending a student to a dorm or an apartment, and anyone managing a condition like diabetes, a heart problem or epilepsy has faced the same question: if something happened tonight, how long before anyone would know? Calling "when you get a chance" doesn't answer it, and neither does hoping. For someone alone, the length of the silence can matter as much as the event itself.

What My Buddy Is Safe Gives You Instead

Here’s how it works. When you sign up, you choose a time for your daily check-in text and name one or more trusted contacts, called your “buddies.” Every day at that time, My Buddy Is Safe sends you a text message. You reply to say you’re okay, and that takes less than a minute. If you don’t reply, your buddies are sent a text telling them they haven’t heard from you. They can then call you, stop by, or ask local police for a welfare check. That way, if something goes wrong, someone who cares finds out the same day instead of days later.

It also fits the way people want to live. There is no app to learn, no device to wear and no camera in the room, only one text that works on any phone. Seniors keep their independence and dignity. Students and young adults keep their freedom, while parents get a daily sign that everything is fine. Anyone with a health condition gets a safety net that doesn't depend on being able to reach a button.