A cheerful cartoon smiley face with “Ollee” written in a fun font on an orange background
App

Ollee

The Ollee app is designed to give children, young people, and parents and carers advice on a range of topics including family, their body, school, and the internet.

Ollee is described as a ‘digital friend’ who asks how you’re doing and gives advice based on how you respond.

Three screenshots from the Ollee app. The first shows Ollee asking what’s on the user‘s mind. They can choose from six options: family, friends, body, school, world, and internet. The second shows how users can customise Ollee – in this image have shoes and headphoens, and you can see the 10 colours they can be. The third shows Ollee describing the feeling of disappointment to the user: you might feel like something has gone wrong – or something you were hoping for hasn‘t happened. You may feel like you made a mistake – or someone else did. Something may have happened that made you feel sad, or like you want to cry.

What can you do in the Ollee app?

Firstly, you can customise Ollee (the ‘digital friend’) by changing their colour and the accessories they wear. This doesn’t change anything about the app works, but can be a fun distraction and help Ollee’s advice feel a bit more personal to you.

To get advice, you choose the topic you want to think about and then select how you feel (from broad feelings, including sad, angry, confused, worried, and stressed). If you don’t know how you feel, you can say so – and Ollee will help you work it out.

You drag a slider to tell the app how strong and intense your feelings are, and select the specific area that’s on your mind (for example, if you feel angry about school, it might be to do with moving schools, not being allowed to join something, or not feeling listened to).

Then, Ollee will give you advice. Sometimes it includes videos and images. You can ask for other ideas and give Ollee feedback on whether you think the advice is helpful or not. Feeding back is anonymous.

If you have an account, you can save pieces of advice or share them with a linked account – this is usually a trusted adult who also has an account on Ollee. Having an account is optional – you can do everything else (except saving advice and sharing it) without one.

Making an account on Ollee You need an email address to have an account on Ollee. If you’re aged under 13, you’ll need a parent or guardian’s approval to create an account. The Ollee app will send them an email asking them to ‘approve’ your account. If they don’t approve it, you can still use Ollee without an account – you just can’t save or share advice (and if you change how Ollee looks, it won’t be saved).

How parents, carers, and other adults can use the Ollee app

Parents, carers, and other adults who support children and young people can use Ollee too. You’ll need to make an account with your email address. You follow the same process as young people – and answer the questions from their perspective. Ollee will give you advice to help you support the child or young person you’re talking about. If the child or young person has a linked Ollee account, you can share the child-friendly version of the advice with them.

How does the Ollee app help?

Ollee aims to help people reflect on how they feel and process their experiences.

It also supports children and young people to connect with their parents and carers by sharing advice.

Ollee app: the details

Ollee is totally free.

The Parent Zone website says that the Ollee app was created for people aged 8 to 11 (and their parents and carers). Older young people can use it and find it helpful too.

Google Play gives it a PEGI 3 rating and says ‘the content of apps with this rating is considered suitable for all age groups’.

If you make an account, your account is password-protected. You need an account to save advice. If you don’t save or share advice, no one else can see what you’ve been looking at after you close the app.

The Ollee app was created by a social enterprise called Parent Zone.

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