Trump Media shares fell by more than 10% on Tuesday morning after the company announced its Truth Social platform is moving to launch a live TV streaming platform.

The plummet of DJT shares came a day after they closed more than 18% lower.

Trump Media’s majority shareholder is former President Donald Trump, who holds nearly 60% of its stock. Trump is in court in New York for jury selection in his criminal hush money case.

The company’s market capitalization has decreased by more than $5 billion since its stock began public trading on March 26 after a merger with shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp.

Trump Media shares that day opened at more than $70 and soared to nearly $80.

Shares were selling for $25.11 as of 10:11 a.m. ET Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, Trump Media in a press release said it “has finished the research and development phase of its new live TV streaming platform and will begin scaling up its own content delivery network.”

The company said it will roll out streaming content in three phases, the first of which will introduce Truth Social’s content delivery network for streaming live TV to the app for Android, iOS and web.

Phase two will release stand-alone Truth Social streaming apps for phones, tablets and other devices, while phase three will release such apps for home television, Trump Media said.

“The streaming content is expected to focus on live TV including news networks, religious channels, family-friendly content including films and documentaries; and other content that has been cancelled, is at risk of cancellation, or is being suppressed on other platforms and services,” Trump Media said in its release.

CEO Devin Nunes in a prepared statement said, “We’re excited to move forward with the next big phase for Truth Social.”

“With our streaming content, we aim to provide a permanent home for high-quality news and entertainment that face discrimination by other channels and content delivery service,” Nunes said. “There is a lot of great content that simply can’t find an audience for unjust reasons, and we want to let these creators know they’ll soon have a guaranteed platform where they won’t be cancelled.”

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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As the City of Calgary recognizes April 18-24, 2024 as OWN.CANCER week, the Alberta Cancer Foundation, Alberta Health Services and University of Calgary will be hosting a series of fun activations and initiatives across the city to support OWN.CANCER’s fundraising goal of $250 million for the Arthur J.E. Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre, set to open in fall 2024.

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A top psychology group is urging technology companies and legislators to take greater steps to protect adolescents’ mental health, arguing that social media platforms are built for adults and are “not inherently suitable for youth.”

Social media features such as endless scrolling and push notifications are “particularly risky” to young people, whose developing brains are less able to disengage from addictive experiences and are more sensitive to distractions, the American Psychological Association wrote in a report released Tuesday.

But age restrictions on social media platforms alone don’t fully address the dangers, especially since many kids easily find workarounds to such limits. Instead, social media companies need to make fundamental design changes, the group said in its report.

“The platforms seem to be designed to keep kids engaged for as long as possible, to keep them on there. And kids are just not able to resist those impulses as effectively as adults,” APA chief science officer Mitch Prinstein said in a phone interview. He added that more than half of teens report at least one symptom of clinical dependency on social media. 

“The fact that this is interfering with their in-person interactions, their time when they should be doing schoolwork, and — most importantly — their sleep has really important implications,” Prinstein said.

The report did not offer specific changes that social media companies can implement. Prinstein suggested one option could be to change the default experience of social media accounts for children, with functions such as endless scrolling or alerts shut off.

The report comes nearly a year after the APA issued a landmark health advisory on social media use in adolescence, which acknowledged that social media can be beneficial when it connects young people with peers who experience similar types of adversity offline. The advisory urged social media platforms to minimize adolescents’ online exposure to cyberbullying and cyberhate, among other recommendations.

But technology companies have made “few meaningful changes” since the advisory was released last May, the APA report said, and no federal policies have been adopted.

A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, disputed the assertion that there have not been changes instituted on its platforms recently. In the last year, Meta has begun showing teens a notification when they spend 20 minutes on Facebook and has added parental supervision tools that allow parents to schedule breaks from Facebook for their teens, according to a list of Meta resources for parents and teenagers. Meta also began hiding more results in Instagram’s search tool related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, and launched nighttime “nudges” that encourage teens to close the app when it’s late.

Prinstein said more is still needed.

“Although some platforms have experimented with modest changes, it is not enough to ensure children are safe,” he said.

TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tuesday’s report comes amid broader concern over the effects of social media on young people. In March, Florida passed a law prohibiting children younger than 14 from having social media accounts and requiring parental consent for those ages 14 and 15. California lawmakers have introduced a bill to protect minors from social media addiction. Dozens of states have sued Meta for what they say are deceptive features that harm children’s and teens’ mental health. 

And last month, a book was published by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt that argues that smartphones and social media have created a “phone-based childhood,” sending adolescents’ rates of anxiety, depression and self-harm skyrocketing. 

The book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” has been hotly debated. While it has its detractors, it instantly became a bestseller.

Prinstein said that it’s up to technology companies to protect their youngest users, but parents can also help. He recommended all devices in a family’s household go on top of the refrigerator at 9 p.m. each night to help kids — and parents — get the amount of sleep they need. He also said there is no harm in limiting or postponing a child’s use of social media.

“We have no data to suggest that kids suffer negative consequences if they delay social media use, or if their parents set it for half an hour a day, or an hour a day,” he said. 

“If anything, kids tell us, anecdotally, that they like to be able to blame it on their parents and say, ‘Sorry, my parents won’t let me stay on for more than an hour, so I have to get off,’” he added. “It kind of gives them a relief.”

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