Cheryl K. Olson is a public health researcher and practitioner. She’s a former teen issues columnist for Parents magazine, and 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.

As of September, 2009, he is the executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation in Lansdowne, VA (near Washington, DC).

They have been married for over 20 years, and have a college-age son who plays video games.