Carter Bank has committed $500,000 to the new Martinsville YMCA. Officials say they are about $16 million toward the goal of $28 million to build the facility on Memorial Boulevard.
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Instagram introduces mandatory ‘Teen Accounts’ with built-in limits, parental controls
(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.
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‘Trump Trade’: Election news leads to biggest 1-day stock market gain in 2 years
(NEW YORK) — The “Trump Trade” was in overdrive Wednesday, making it one for the history books on Wall Street with record finishes for all three major stock indices.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rocketed 3.6%, its biggest one day jump since November 2022. The S&P 500 shot up 2.5% while the Nasdaq climbed nearly 3%.
The biggest winners were companies and sectors that investors are betting will benefit from President-elect Trump’s policies.
Bank stocks, including JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Bank of America (BAC) rallied on the promise of lower taxes and less regulation. The small-cap Russell 2000 Index (RUT), which includes some regional banks, soared nearly 6%.
It was the biggest surge for the U.S. dollar since 2020, and Carl Icahn, the activist investor and billionaire, said it will lead to less regulation and more mergers and acquisition.
Elon Musk was perhaps the day’s biggest winner. Shares of his Tesla Corporation (TSLA) rocketed nearly 15%. The world’s wealthiest person has been a staunch Trump proponent, donating more than $130 million toward Trump’s election efforts. In his victory speech, the president-elect referred to Musk as a “super genius” and has promised him a role in his administration.
“The biggest positive from a Trump win would be for Tesla and Musk,” wrote Dan Ives, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush. “We believe a Trump presidency would be an overall negative for the EV industry as likely the EV rebates/tax incentives get pulled. However, for Tesla we see this as a huge positive. Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched in the EV industry and this dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players from flooding the US market,” Ives wrote in a research note.
The cryptocurrency market also cheered Trump’s return to the White House. Bitcoin (BTCUSD) notched a record close, climbing above $75,000. Trump has said he wants the U.S. to be the “crypto capital of the planet” and plans to create a “strategic reserve of bitcoin.”
In September, he even launched his own crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, a new venture with family members to trade cryptocurrencies.
Donald Trump saw his personal wealth balloon during Wednesday’s stock market rally, at least on paper. Shares of his Trump Media and Technology Group (DJT), the parent company of his social media platform Truth Social, soared more than 30% at the market’s open but pulled back considerably to finish just 6% higher. Still, that gave the company a market cap of about $7.2 billion, with Trump’s majority stake worth about $4.1 billion.
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