Utah is famous for its stunning natural landscapes and the Sundance Film Festival.
But it also happens to be America's youngest state thanks, in part, to its Mormon population which tends to have larger families.
One in three residents is under the age of 18, and the cohort is about to become the subject of a bold experiment to try to counter America's youth mental health crisis.
Under 18s will soon be prevented from even signing up for social media apps without their parents' consent under sweeping new laws.
The legislation will also give parents access to their teens' social media accounts and impose overnight curfews unless parents opt out.
Among Utah's teenagers, the reaction to the plan has been mixed.
For some, social media can be a space that erodes their self-confidence and exposes them to harm. For others, it is a sanctuary.
Critics say the new legislation infringes free speech and privacy rights and could cut off LGBTIQ+ kids and others from vital peer support.
Growing up in a small town north of Salt Lake City, social media felt like a lifeline for 18-year-old Jay.
"I really only found a queer community because of online," they said.
"Honestly, it's probably the reason I came out."
When Jay underwent a double mastectomy last year for gender-affirming reasons, they experienced the good and the bad of that social media presence.
"I think 100 people unfollowed me on Instagram and I was like, devastated. But I also had a lot of positive comments … and all of this stuff that really made me feel safe," they said.
Jay thinks the new laws are a good idea in principle, but "they're focusing on the wrong thing".
"We need to be restricting what the apps are doing … that are profiting off our addiction … and not necessarily what the kids are doing," they said.
Jay argues education should also be central to any attempt to curb the potential harms of social media.
"I wish I had a media literacy class at any point. I would be happy to take that class because I think the issue is kids don't know what is healthy and unhealthy and what's creepy people on the internet versus friends," they said.
Jay's friend Josh, who is 16, said the plan did not address the root of the problem.
"If we remove that responsibility to have to teach our children what to do in a situation like that, how to handle the addiction to social media, then it's not going to solve the problem," Josh said.
The 'persistent sadness' of American teens
American teens are in crisis, according to an alarming report released by the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) earlier this year.
A survey of 17,000 adolescents at high schools across the US in 2021 found that nearly three in five teenage girls felt persistent sadness — double the rate of boys.
The report also found high levels of depression and suicidal thoughts among lesbian, gay and bisexual youth.
CDC experts say the causes of national youth "hopelessness" are complex: the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of mass shootings, and the existential threat of climate change.
But social media use has also emerged as a chief antagonist.
Last month, the White House issued an executive action declaring: "There is now undeniable evidence that social media and other online platforms have contributed to … an unprecedented youth mental health crisis."
The fact sheet cited a 30 per cent rise in anxiety and depression among teens over the past decade.
The executive action, including the establishment of an inter-agency task force on children's online health and safety, coincided with the issue of a stark advisory from surgeon general Vivek Murthy about the potential risks of social media.
The surgeon general's 19-page document notes that the situation is nuanced, but cites studies on a wide range of possible harms, including exposure to hate-based content, cyberbullying and predatory behaviour.
The concerns have triggered a wave of new restrictions across America.
Arkansas has passed a similar bill to Utah's — the Social Media Safety Act, — requiring parents of under 18s to prove their identity before the teen can open an account.
Texas is moving in a similar direction with its Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act, and there are several bills doing the rounds at a federal level in Washington DC.
California's Age-Appropriate Design Code Act is more of a safety belt approach. Among its requirements is that tech companies must enact by default the highest privacy settings on products likely to be accessed by minors.
Surgeon general Vivek Murthy urged politicians and tech companies to act.
"The entire burden of mitigating the risk of harm of social media cannot be placed on the shoulders of children and parents," he said.
When US President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address to Congress earlier this year, one section in particular got the attention of Utah state senator Mike McKell.
"We must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit," Mr Biden told a joint session of congress.
"It's time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop big tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us."
It was music to the ears of Senator McKell, who helped spearhead Utah's new laws.
Mr McKell was also troubled by the studies that suggested social media was playing at least a contributing role in rising rates of mental health issues among young people.
"Our kids are being harmed … we need to take a stand," he said.
"I feel like we're behind. We should have done this years ago."
'Everything they do is designed for tweens and teens'
Running alongside concerns about youth mental health is the dilemma of what to do about TikTok.
A recent appearance before a congressional hearing by the app's CEO, Shou Zi Chew, turned into a bipartisan grilling, as politician after politician cited concerns about Chinese government influence and youth mental health.
TikTok is now banned on government-issued phones at a federal level, and many states and colleges have also ordered it removed from devices.
Montana has gone further, passing a bill to prevent TikTok from being used anywhere in the state, a move which was promptly met with legal action by the tech company, citing first amendment violations.
Big tech is vowing to challenge a number of the new laws.
Industry group NetChoice, whose members include Google, TikTok and Amazon, argues the moves are unconstitutional, infringe free speech, and may endanger children by requiring them to share personally identifiable information.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that's exactly what you're seeing in the Utah legislation," said the group's vice-president, Carl Szabo.
Mr Szabo said tech companies were already building parental controls into their products.
"Giving parents tools to control what their teenagers have enables one company to show that it is more sensitive … for a competitive advantage," he said.
"That's the market deciding and parents deciding, not government deciding."
Those arguments are met with scepticism from Corinne Johnson, co-founder of Utah Parents United, who lobbied for the new legislation.
"I think it's kind of hypocritical when a tech company says, 'Oh, we're taking action to protect kids,' yet they continue to design their platforms to entice children to be on them," she said.
"The content they create, the emojis, the filters, all of the interactive games — everything that they do is designed for tweens and teens."
Corinne Johnson said her activism was partly inspired by the experience of her daughter Liddy, who she said became addicted to social media.
Liddy, who is now 14, said she gradually got sucked into sharing more and more online.
"I started showing my face and things like that, and it just made me feel good to have all these people saying I'm so pretty and like, 'I love your videos,' all these things. And I just wanted more," she said.
"I started to suffer from mental health problems. I got high anxiety and depression, and the very first thing we did was get rid of social media. So we took away my phone and I got a flip phone and it really helped."
If the tech companies don't manage to stop them, the laws will come into effect in Utah in 2024.
The results will be closely watched across the state and beyond.
Sarah Coyne from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, thinks the motivations behind the legislation are honourable.
"We want to protect our kids, right?" she said.
Yet Dr Coyne, who researches the impact of media on family life, is concerned about the specifics of the bill, including parents being given access to their children's apps and messages.
"It'd be like forcing your child to hand over their diary … or like showing up in the lunch room every single day at school," she said.
That, she said, could have unintended consequences, including young people not feeling comfortable in those online spaces.
"What I worry the bill does is it … just says social media is bad for kids, when we really know it's so much more complex," she said.
"Unfortunately, I don't think that it's going to have all that much impact on reducing mental health struggles among teenagers in Utah."
