Cheryl Olson is a public health and education researcher and practitioner. She’s a former teen issues columnist for Parents magazine, and (while at Harvard) was the Principal Investigator of the first federally funded, large-scale research project to take an in-depth look at the effects of electronic games on preteens and teenagers. She has served as a health behavior consultant to a number of non-profit organizations and corporations, as well as to government health agencies in the United States and in Europe. She is also an award-winning video producer and writer. She holds a Doctor of Science degree in health and social behavior from the Harvard School of Public Health, and a postdoctoral European Certificate in Pharmaceutical Medicine from the University of Basel (Switzerland).

Larry Kutner is the author of five previous books about child psychology and parent-child communication. He wrote the award-winning weekly New York Times “Parent & Child” column, was the “Ask the Expert” columnist for Parents magazine, and has been a columnist and contributing editor at Parenting and Baby Talk magazines. He’s a licensed psychologist and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, which awarded him its National Psychology Award for the best newspaper writing about psychology in the United States. In 2008, he received APA’s award for Distinguished Lifetime Contribution to Media Psychology. His previous positions include executive director at the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, and executive director of Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies at Stanford University. He is currently consulting to foundations, nonprofits and educational organizations.

Currently based in the San Francisco area, they have been married for 27 years, and have a young adult son who plays video games.