DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGIST | MEDIA RESEARCHER
Teach your kids to live in the real world, using the science of screens.
25 years inside the media lab taught me how TV hooked kids. Now, I teach parents how to use those same principles to get their kids off tech.
Research & consulting for
THE ORIGIN STORY
I helped build the machine, then it came for my kids!
I'm a developmental psychologist, professor, and mom of two who spent over two decades helping the biggest names in children's media understand one thing: what makes a child pay attention.
The very tools I once used to hold children's attention became the thing I was desperately trying to undo at home.
I was part of the team that engineered childhood attention before that media machine became something none of us ever anticipated.
Today I translate that insider knowledge into something practical: a framework for parents, educators, and anyone raising kids in a screen-saturated world to understand what's really happening and what to do about it. We can get our kids back; it’s not too late. Join me as we make this stand.
Anna Akerman Berman, Ph.D., is a psychologist, researcher and media consultant who earned her undergraduate degree at Brown University and her doctorate at New York University, concentrating in social and developmental psychology. She began her career as a researcher at Sesame Workshop and Noggin, where her literal job was to observe whether children kept "Eyes on Screen," analyzing what held kids' attention and helping creative teams act on that data.
Over the following 20+ years, she provided psychological research consulting to executives at Nickelodeon, MTV Networks, Disney/ABC Television Group, PBS, Scholastic, BabyFirst TV, Sesame Workshop, and Noggin, among others. She also published peer-reviewed journal articles and helped create the first-ever Wii game for preschoolers (Go Diego Go Safari Adventure). She became a professor of communications at Adelphi University on Long Island, continuing her consulting work while raising two children — son Eli and daughter Izzy — whose screen habits became both her greatest research lab and her humbling reality check.
The newsletter for those who want the inside story.
I will share ideas from 25 years of children's media research, translated into something you can actually use at home. No rules. No judgment. Just the science, made practical.
