Press Release - IPIE Appoints Deborah Fry as Chair of the IPIE's Scientific Panel on Child Protection and Social Media

July 27, 2026 - Zürich, Switzerland - The International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) today announced that Professor Deborah Fry has been appointed Chair of its Scientific Panel on Child Protection and Social Media. Professor Fry succeeds Dr. Selcan Kaynak, who led the Panel during its inaugural year and will remain an active member of the panel.

Professor Fry is a Professor of International Child Protection Research at the University of Edinburgh and Global Director of Data for Childlight – Global Child Safety Institute, a data institute focused on understanding the prevalence and nature of child sexual exploitation and abuse worldwide and translating that data into action to safeguard children. At Childlight, she leads the annual Into the Light Index on the global prevalence and scale of child sexual exploitation and abuse, as well as the biannual Searchlight publication on its nature.  

Since 2019, she has served as academic lead for the University of Edinburgh on a long-term agreement with UNICEF covering child protection research, administrative data, and training. She was also an academic Principal Investigator of a multi-country study on the drivers of violence affecting children conducted with the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti. She holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, an MA from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and an MPH from Columbia University.

Professor Fry expressed her commitment to the panel’s mission:

I am honored to take on this role at such an important moment for children’s online safety. As emerging technologies continue to reshape how young people experience the internet, our task is to make sure decision-makers have the evidence they need to act with confidence. I want to thank Dr. Selcan Kaynak for her leadership in building this panel, and I look forward to continuing that work alongside our panel of researchers.

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Dr. Kaynak chaired the Scientific Panel on Child Protection and Social Media in its first year, guiding its research agenda on the intersection of media systems, technology, and child welfare and publishing two scientific assessments. Dr. Kaynak is a Researcher at the Trauma and Stress Lab in the Psychology Department at Koç University in Istanbul and previously served as Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science & International Relations at Boğaziçi University. The IPIE’s Senior Management Team thanks Dr. Kaynak for her leadership and welcomed her continued contribution to the panel as a member.

IPIE Selected as Safe Online Grantee

Professor Fry’s appointment comes as the IPIE was also named among the first 30 grantees in Safe Online’s latest targeted funding round, which is awarding US$8million to organizations tackling the evolving threat of technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse (TF-CSEA). As emerging technologies, including generative AI, reshape the digital landscape, the funded projects will help strengthen prevention, improve response systems, generate new evidence, and develop technology-driven solutions to better protect children online. The IPIE’s funded work will support a new scientific assessment on how platform design and monetization enable TF-CSEA, resulting in a peer-reviewed report, a multilingual Summary for Policymakers, and policy-ready tools.

On Safe Online’s support, Professor Phil Howard, President of the IPIE, said:

Children deserve safe digital spaces. The IPIE’s study and policy toolkit will turn evidence into action – equipping policymakers, platforms, and communities with the tools to make safer digital spaces a reality for children.

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The Scientific Panel on Child Protection and Social Media is one of several IPIE scientific panels that provide independent, evidence-based assessments on threats to the global information environment.

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More information about the International Panel on the Information Environment:

• The full membership of the Scientific Panel on Child Protection and Social Media
• Latest news and announcements
• More recent scientific research outputs from the IPIE

For media inquiries, interviews, or more information, please contact Press@IPIE.info

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About the IPIE 

The International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) is an independent and global science organization providing scientific knowledge about the health of the world’s information environment. Based in Switzerland, the IPIE offers policymakers, industry, and civil society actionable scientific assessments about threats to the information environment. The IPIE is the only scientific body systematically organizing, evaluating, and elevating research with the broad aim of improving the global information environment. Hundreds of researchers worldwide contribute to the IPIE’s reports.