(NEW YORK) — Much like its fellow fast food competitors slashing prices and offering special discounts to lure in customers, Arby’s is adding a new deal to its menu with its Double the Meats Meal.
For just $7, the new Double the Meats Meal includes a Double Roast Beef or Double Beef ‘N Cheddar sandwich, along with a medium fry and medium drink.
The Double Roast Beef sandwich boasts two times the amount of slowly roasted, thinly sliced-to-order, signature roast beef piled high on a toasted sesame seed bun.
The Double Beef ‘N Cheddar also piles on a double portion of roast beef, topped with cheddar sauce and zesty Red Ranch, served on a toasted onion roll.
The new deal comes on the heels of similar promotions and discounts from Arby’s competitors. In June, McDonald’s launched a $5 Meal Deal that includes a McDouble or McChicken sandwich, small french fries, a four-piece Chicken McNuggets and a small soft drink. Earlier this month, the fast food giant extended the popular deal through December.
Several other fast food chains including Burger King, Wendy’s, Starbucks and Taco Bell have rolled out comparable discounts, hoping to entice customers looking to stretch their dollars as much as possible.
(NEW YORK) — For the first time in its history, Instagram on Tuesday announced the launch of accounts designed specifically for teenage users with built-in privacy protections.
The new accounts, called “Teen Accounts,” will be automatic for all Instagram users under the age of 18, both for teens already using the app and for those signing up.
By default, Instagram users younger than 16 will need a parent’s permission to change their account settings.
The changes — expected to impact tens of millions of users — were announced by Instagram head Adam Mosseri in a live interview on ABC News’ Good Morning America.
“They’re an automatic set of protections for teens that try to proactively address the top concerns that we’ve heard from parents about teens online,” Mosseri said on GMA. “Things like who can contact them, what content they see and how much time they spend on their device … all without requiring any involvement from the parent.”
Mosseri said the rollout of Teen Accounts starts Tuesday with new users signing up for the app, while existing teen users will see their accounts switch to the new Teen Accounts model within 60 days.
Among the changes put in place by Instagram include a new privacy setting that, by default, places all teen users in private accounts. In order to switch to a public account, teens under age 16 will need a parent’s permission.
Under the private account setting, teens will need to accept new followers and only people whom they accept as followers can see their content and interact with them.
In addition, teen users will now automatically only be able to message with people they follow, or are already connected to, and parents will have a new tool in their settings that allows them to see with whom their teen has recently been messaging.
With the new accounts, teens will have the power to choose the age-appropriate topics they want to see more of on Instagram, like sports or art, and parents will also be able to see the topics their teens choose.
In order to limit the amount of time spent on Instagram, all Teen Accounts will be placed in “sleep mode” between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., while parents can also adjust their child’s time settings — including limiting access completely overnight — in the parental supervision tool.
Another change for Teen Accounts is that they will automatically be placed in more restrictive content settings, which will limit the content they see in search functions like Reels or Explore from accounts they don’t follow, according to Instagram.
Antigone Davis, vice president and global head of safety for Meta, the parent company of Instagram, told GMA the company is also implementing new ways to verify users’ ages.
“We are building technology to try to identify if you’ve lied about your age and then move you into those stricter settings,” Davis said. “This is a challenging area for industry, which is why, on top of building that technology that will try to identify age liars and put them into those protective settings, we also will have moments where, if we get a strong signal, we will ask you to age verify.”
Davis said that parents will be able to monitor their teens’ account and adjust their settings from their own Instagram accounts.
“The idea is to really make it simpler, so they [parents] have their own center that they can go and look and see what the privacy setting is for their teen,” she said.
Changes spurred by parents and teens
The changes for teen Instagram users come amid mounting evidence showing the dangers of social media for young users.
Social media use is linked with symptoms of depression and anxiety, body image issues, and lower life satisfaction for some teens and adolescents, research shows. Heavy social media use around the time adolescents go through puberty is linked with lower life satisfaction one year later, one large study found.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who previously issued an advisory highlighting a crisis in youth mental health, has said he believes being on social media “does a disservice” to kids early in their teen years. Noting the crisis among kids, the American Psychological Association last year issued the first guidance of its kind to help teens use social media safely.
In January, while testifying at a Senate hearing, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, publicly apologized to parents, caregivers and loved ones of young people who they say were harmed due to social media use, telling them, “It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered.”
In his apology, Zuckerberg also emphasized Meta’s efforts on safety, adding, “This is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry-leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”
Davis said the newly-announced changes to Instagram for teen users came after conversations with parents and teenagers around the world.
She said the company focused on making it simpler for parents to know how, when, and with whom their teens are engaging on Instagram.
“We’ve had these incremental changes along the way as we’ve been working back and forth with parents and experts,” Davis said of previous safety changes for teen users. “What we’re really trying to do here is standardize a lot of this approach.”
She added of the new features, “There are these broad protections that we have in place, and if your teen wants to change them, and they’re under the age of 16, they have to come to you for permission, they’ve got to invite you in. It’s just a different way of thinking about things.”
Parents and caregivers as well as teens can learn more about Teen Accounts by visiting Instagram.com/teenaccounts.
(NEW YORK) — Shares in former President Donald Trump’s social media company fell more than 12% Wednesday morning on the heels of Tuesday’s presidential debate, which a CNN poll indicated was won by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, were trading Wednesday at the lowest level since the company first went public — a drop of more than 70% since a closing high of $66.22 on March 27.
As of noon, the company’s shares were selling for $16.29.
For some investors, Trump Media serves as a bellwether for the former president’s odds in the upcoming presidential election. When Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts in New York in May, the company’s stock price tumbled — but the stock surged in the days following the July presidential debate and the assassination attempt on the former president.
Analysts have said that the company’s stock performance is removed from the financial outlook of the company, which reported losing more than $16 million over a three-month period ending in June during which it only brought in $836,000 in revenue.
The stock price has been buoyed by a number of passionate individual investors who bought shares in the company to support Trump or because they believe in the company’s mission.
Next week, Trump faces a pivotal choice about his investment in the company. The lockup provision that barred him from selling his shares for the first six months since the company went public expires next week, meaning that Trump could begin selling his shares in the company as early as Sept. 19.
According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Trump owns approximately 115 million shares of the company, which are worth nearly $2 billion based on Wednesday’s stock price.
On paper, Trump has lost more than $4 billion in his stake over the last six months as the company’s stock price has declined.
A representative for Trump Media & Technology Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
(TAMPA, Fla.) — Hurricane Milton left widespread gasoline shortages across Florida after it made landfall on Wednesday night and cut across the state. The damage exacerbated fuel outages that began before the storm arrived, as millions fled from its path.
Nearly a quarter of the roughly 7,900 gas stations in the state have run dry, petroleum data firm GasBuddy reported Thursday. Oil Price Information Service, or OPIS, another company that tracks the sector, found as much as half of the state’s gas stations lack fuel, Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at OPIS, told ABC News.
Across Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg, almost two thirds of gas stations are without fuel, according to GasBuddy.
Experts said they expect the gas shortages to persist for days, hamstringing businesses and everyday people as Florida begins to recover from Hurricane Milton.
The delayed return of gasoline in the region owes to disruption at Port Tampa Bay, which says it handles more than 43% of the state’s petroleum imports. Far-reaching power outages will also impede gas service, since gas stations depend on power to pump fuel from storage tanks and deliver it into vehicles, experts said.
“This kind of situation isn’t solved overnight,” Jon Davis, chief meteorologist at Everstream Analytics, told ABC News. “It’s going to take many days to work itself out and get the situation back to normal.”
Port Tampa Bay, which remains closed, appears to have averted serious damage from the storm, the port said in a statement on Thursday morning. However, the port also noted that it continues to face road closures and flood concerns in the surrounding area.
“Some damage was observed to buildings but there has been no significant damage to docks, so far,” said the statement. “We are working with our fuel terminal operators to assess their facilities and learn when they will be able to return to service.”
Port Tampa Bay did not respond to an ABC News request for comment about the extent of damage from the storm.
While the port escaped a disaster that could have hampered fuel supplies in the state for weeks, the ongoing disruption still poses significant challenges for gas delivery in the short term, Jason Miller, a professor of supply-chain management at Michigan State University, told ABC News.
“It does seem we’ve avoided a worst-case scenario,” Miller said.
Depending on the extent of damage at the port, gas stations may come to rely on truck deliveries for the transport of fuel, Miller said. In that case, it would take some time to build up the capacity necessary to overcome the state’s gas outages, he added.
“It’s not a solution that you could implement tomorrow,” Miller said.
The potential return of port operations or the supplemental fuel from trucks would both rely on the state’s roads, some of which were damaged by the storm, experts noted. Such infrastructure may require repairs before gasoline carriers can safely deliver fuel to stations.
“The road issue can get taken care of in the next day or two,” Davis said.
Even if Port Tampa Bay comes back online and trucks join in to aid the recovery, a significant additional problem must first be addressed: power shortages. Gas stations require power to pump fuel from storage tanks into customers’ vehicles, and more than 3.4 million customers are currently without power in Florida, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.
Port Tampa Bay said on Thursday that it remains without power, which it needs to operate oil terminals that make up a critical step in the supply chain.
More than 50,000 linemen have been pre-staged across Florida to restore power, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday.
“In a perfect world, power comes back quickly,” OPIS’ Cinquegrana said. “I think by early next week we might still see some stations out but for the most part you’ll get pretty close to normal.”
