Amplify Utah supports and facilitates dynamic journalistic storytelling to celebrate diverse points of view. By partnering with traditional media, we cultivate an environment that encourages stories be shared widely and made easily accessible for our communities to read, hear, watch and engage.
Sandy’s new female speaking club strives to amplify women’s voices
07-06-2025 By Savannah Stacey
These women have entered their public speaking era.
80 Years Later: Student Documentary Revisits Utah's Topaz Camp
05-11-2025 By Jordan Thornblad
"It [is] so important to Utah history that we don’t brush this under the rug."
'Don't Let It Happen Again': Topaz Survivors Warn of Detention Powers
05-11-2025 By Marissa Bond
“When you forget your history, you repeat it,” says a 94-year-old Japanese American in the University of Utah student-made documentary.
Your voices matter. Let us help you get your stories out to our media partners.
Amplify Utah helps facilitate the connection between student work and traditional media outlets to encourage more diversity of voices.
For those interested in replicating, adapting or building upon the Amplify project in your own community, we've put together a comprehensive playbook. We are also happy to share with you a branding toolkit to get you started.
This story is jointly published as part of the Utah College Media Collaborative, a cross-campus project bringing together emerging journalists from Salt Lake Community College, Southern Utah University, the University of Utah, Utah Tech University and Weber State University. The collaborative is an Amplify Utah project with support from PBS Utah and POV.
Before discovering Instagram filters, Lauren Bohanan said she never worried about how she looked online.
“I didn't even know Instagram had filters until my friends at the time always told me to use them,” said the Utah native and bioengineering major at the University of Colorado Boulder. “It bred a lot of insecurity that I never had before.”
Those insecurities, she added, eventually contributed to body dysmorphia and influenced her decision to get lip fillers.
Bohanan's experience reflects the broader impact of Augmented Reality, or AR, beauty filters on college students' self-perception. While Meta removed third-party AR and beauty filters from its apps on Jan. 14, these digital alterations have already become fixtures on most social media platforms, increasing pressure on young adults to conform to unrealistic beauty standards.
Before 2015, Instagram offered only its original filters such as X-Pro II, Earlybird and Apollo, which allowed users to capture the essence of vintage worn-out Polaroids or achieve a “Tumblr-esque” aesthetic; a hipster lifestyle striving for uniqueness and individuality which later became a niche in of itself. However, many of these nostalgic tools have been eclipsed by the rise of AR filters – digital overlays that augment the real world seen through a smartphone camera and add other elements to the images.
AR filters have rapidly developed since their arrival on social media. Beauty filters can contort facial features and body appearance, smooth skin texture, fix discoloration and enhance various facial features. A study published last October suggests beautifying filters can make young women feel more dissatisfied with their bodies.
University of Utah junior, Karen San Juan explains how AR filters can lead to heavy comparison of physical beauty.
“These filters can be a mask, helping people cover their insecurities but creating a false reality. Especially with evolving technology, it is harder to tell if someone has a beauty filter on, some viewers may be led to believe that the filter is one’s natural beauty,” San Juan said.
Grant Beck, a sophomore computer science major at the University of Utah, said beauty filters can mask insecurities but also create a false reality.
“It is harder to tell if someone has a beauty filter on and some viewers may be led to believe that it is their natural beauty,” Beck added.
As social media has expanded as an industry, allowing additions of AR filters that enhance beauty in many different ways, so has changed the definition of beauty. Specifically that of body image is something that has been heavily touched through the posts of influencers on different social media platforms. Not only does this portrayal of ‘perfect’ bodies impact depression or anxiety but can also influence physical health through eating disorders.
“The media has expectations on what the beauty standard is, and if you don't fit into it, then you're 'not good enough,' which can lead to many people feeling insecure about their physical appearance.”
Snapchat first popularized AR filters in 2015, with other apps like Instagram and TikTok quickly following suit.
Professor Avery Holton, who serves as communication department chair at the U, said most filters began as stickers or sparkles before evolving into tools for people to modify their appearance.
“[Filters] match an aesthetic that we feel like we should be achieving to fit in or to meet standards,” he said.
Holton added people can use filters for fun but they become "more problematic when it's done to influence or guide the communities we are in" and change our perception of ourselves and who we should be.
Holton said these filters often target Gen Z, specifically young women, adding that women between 15 and 24 use social media the most and average about seven to eight hours a day.
As young women spend hours scrolling through social media, they often encounter targeted images such as trends, aesthetics and lifestyle content. By interacting with these images, their preferences can feed into an algorithm that influences how they should act, look and behave.
Isabelle Freiling, assistant professor of communication at the University of Utah, said social media platforms use sophisticated algorithms that can precisely identify user preferences and interests.
“They show us information that we engage with that keeps us on those platforms,” she said. “Sometimes you might be like, 'I don't want to spend much time scrolling on Instagram' but you're still going there and scrolling. It's not easy to resist, it’s so hard to turn away from it all.”
Karen San Juan, a health and kinesiology major at the University of Utah, said she believes presenting idealized images on social media can lead to harmful comparisons, depression and anxiety.
“There tends to be this idea of 'perfection' and only sharing the good moments with everyone,” she said. “From an outside perspective, you may think someone is having the time of their life, you may start comparing your life to theirs and question why yours isn't as great.”
Younger women tend to see this more often in social media influencers, who they idolize for their beauty, lifestyle and aesthetics. Beauty filters give many young women the chance to replicate the look of these influencers to try to achieve the same aesthetic or lifestyle that has gained them fame or recognition.
Beck believes younger generations’ need for approval makes them vulnerable to filters on social media. Based on observations Beck has made from experiences with female relatives and friends, he said he understands the sense of pressure surrounding societal ideals of beauty and perfection.
“Women in particular might be affected because society already holds them to a high standard of physical appearance.”
Bohanan, however, expressed skepticism about whether removing AR filters will improve students' mental health.
“The damage is done in the sense there are still editing apps such as Facetune and now AI,” she said. “I've seen so many ads on TikTok and reels for body and face-altering programs that receive high downloads. The age of social media will always find a way to target insecurities as that's how there is control and profit.”
Addy Christensen and Eliza Delgado reported and produced this story as English and Psychology students at the University of Utah.
As winter sets in, the annual inversions that blanket the Salt Lake Valley bring along toxic pollutants trapped in a haze of cold fog. And the humans of Utah aren’t the only locals enduring these conditions.
Wildlife and animals in outdoor spaces at Salt Lake County zoos, aquariums and aviaries also contend with the effects of a changing climate and bad air, experts say.
Global climate change has caused turmoil to ecosystems, food chains, seasonal migrations and habitats, according to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Animals at Utah’s Hogle Zoo, too, are experiencing an ever-changing habitat and lifestyle, as educators and zookeepers adapt the enclosures and living spaces to the changing climate.
With Utah's unpredictable heat waves, less snow and increasingly frequent bad air quality each year, employees at Hogle Zoo are focused on keeping the animals safe and healthy while adapting to environmental changes that affect each species’ habitats and needs, said Hayley Parkinson, the zoo’s onsite engagement coordinator.
“Our zoo’s mission is to help these animals in their natural homes,” Parkinson said. “Climate change is something that impacts every habitat on the planet, so it's definitely something that is a concern for all of the animals.”
Parkinson works with programs like the National Network for Ocean and Climate Change, Polar Bears International and the Climate Alliance program, all of which strive to create more conversation about climate change using solution-based ideas for educators and encouraging community-based learning.
“[The goal] is to expand the zoo staff’s knowledge of climate change for the animals and the community,” she said.
Parkinson said climate change has become a polarizing and often political topic, adding she struggled to figure out the best approach in talking to diverse zoo-going audiences about its impact on the animals at Hogle and in the wild.
“[I] never heard anyone talk about climate change, only argue about climate change,” she said.
Parkinson said the zoo intends to simplify the conversation about climate change for the public, using information about ecosystems and the animals to educate.
“I want them to understand why the sea ice is important to the polar bear, and then I want them to understand the system that’s affecting it,” said Parkinson.
One of the zoo’s partners, Polar Bears International, uses education and outreach, research and advocacy to reduce the impacts of climate change, said Marissa Krouse, the group’s director of conservation programs.
Krouse helps develop and communicate the organization’s values and emphasizes the importance of sharing knowledge and the power of local education.
“Now more than ever, local community action is critically important, especially in the absence of federal action,” she said.
While the weather in Utah can span both hot and cold temperatures, Parkinson said the zoo must consider each animal’s natural habitat, including how weather affects its health and behaviors.
“Gorillas have a temperature limit of about 50 degrees, meaning that if it's colder than that, they have access inside,” said Parkinson. “They can choose to be outdoors or indoors.”
Although the weather may differ from the usual environment of the animal, the zoo includes built-in habitats meant to adjust the animals’ natural setting, using devices like heaters, misters, saltwater pools and climate-controlled spaces.
“As we see trends continue to change with warming, [we need to] make sure they’re still comfortable,” said Parkinson.
While the image of polar bears amid melting ice commonly represents a warming earth, Parkinson said the zoo’s grizzlies are also affected by climate change locally. The zoo’s bears, raised in the wild, came to Hogle because their mother often led them into human spaces looking for food. Their comfort around people, Parkinson said, made the wild a dangerous place for both the bears and humans. Living this way this can affect the bears' diet, nutrition and the territory they end up defending.
Austin Green, ecologist and conservation biologist at the Utah-based Sageland Collaborative, said the organization conducts science in service of wildlife and wildland, to affect change for both people and wildlife for good on the landscape.
Green runs Wildlife Watch, a camera tracking project that investigates the effects humans have on local environmental changes, and how it alters wildlife behavior, species and their interactions.
“There's a high likelihood that a changing climate is going to affect an animal's ability to adapt as climates get warmer and drier it becomes harder for mammals to adapt to urban development,” Green said.
While the effects of climate change on bigger animals, like bears, are more noticeable, even smaller creatures, like the Pine Bark Beetle, can be affected, Parkinson said.
While the insect, native to Dixie and Manti La Sal national forests in Utah, usually dies off in colder seasons, warmer winters have extended its life cycles and doubled its population, she said. The beetles, one of the most prevalent in Utah, typically feed on pine trees, which can create dead, dried-up bark and make forests more susceptible to fires.
Parkinson said larger, systemic problems show ties among animals at the zoo and in the wild and how they connect to the larger environment inhabited by humans.
“[We try to] cushion our animals here at the zoo from impacts of climate change,” Parkinson said, “but, hopefully, the animals … can help us tell the story of those in the wild, the issues there, and then get people on board with fixing it.”
The landscape of northern Utah is defined by its sweeping mountain ranges, beautiful valleys and expansive Great Salt Lake. Despite the disparity of these natural features, they are all deeply connected to each other as they play vital roles in transporting or holding water. This water that flows down the mountains, through the valleys and into the Great Salt Lake is the same water that powers our hydroelectric plants, runs through our taps and gives refuge to our local wildlife.
“The key thing about Big Cottonwood [Creek] is it’s used twice,” said Dustin Gilgen, water treatment systems manager at the Big Cottonwood Water Treatment Plant. “It’s used for power, and it’s also used for drinking water.” This plant is able to treat up to 38 million gallons of water a day, enough to fill over 57 Olympic swimming pools.
From the alpine lakes up in the mountains, to the wetlands down by the Great Salt Lake, our water traverses a very diverse landscape in such a short time.
“We are very fortunate that we have incredibly clean water here and it comes down rather fast,” said Teresa Gray, water quality and treatment administrator at the Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities. “It can take just a few hours between the time the water falls in the canyons, and it ends up in someone’s home or in the Jordan River.”
Chris Eddington lives in a peaceful, modest bungalow at the end of a small dirt road in Tooele County. Three horses roam his half-acre property less than a mile from Great Salt Lake. Wearing a pair of cowboy boots, a plaid jacket and blue Levi jeans, Eddington said he’s frustrated with a recently approved inland port that’s on the other side of his horse stable.
“If they’re gonna put manufacturing in, I got to worry about pollution,” he said. “I got to worry about groundwater pollution because I’m on a well … all of this stuff has to do with my way of life, my property value. Who's gonna want to buy a house with a factory behind it?”
Tooele County resident Chris Eddington, whose backyard borders the recently approved Tooele Valley inland port project, poses for a photo in his house on February 27, 2024. (Photo credit: Xiangyao “Axe” Tang)
Eddington, like many in Tooele County, said he feels county officials and developers communicated poorly over the last year and ignored concerns during the approval process for the development of two inland port projects in the county.
Teri Durfee, a lifetime Tooele County resident, said she has opposed the development since she saw the first iteration of one of the port developments plans four years ago.
“The thing that upsets me is that there hasn’t seemed to be a concern for what the people most affected in the community care about,” she said.
Tooele County resident Teri Durfee, who lives near the recently approved Tooele Valley inland port project, posing for a photo on his property on February 27, 2024. (Photo credit: Xiangyao “Axe” Tang)Residents, like Durfee, say they worry about the possibility of the developments worsening Tooele’s already bad water issues, damaging wetlands and increasing noise and air pollution and traffic.
Ben Hart, the director of Utah Inland Port Authority, says that community input will be an important part of the port’s direction.
“Everything that we’re doing as a whole is according to local ordinance and anything that will require public transparency, we’ll allow the public to be involved,” said Hart. “And so I think that the ability to still help shape a good development that is very friendly to the neighborhood is not only possible but very vital.”
At a December meeting, the Utah Inland Port Authority board unanimously approved both the Tooele Valley Port Project – to be located about half an hour from the county seat and near Eddington’s house – and the Twenty Wells Port Project in northern Tooele County.
Nearly 30 people packed into the meeting room to share their opposition to the project. Among them was Durfee, who lives a few miles from Eddington, and other residents who expressed frustration the projects seem “all but decided” and have been since at least October 2023.
“My big concerns are the big growth we have here, the traffic and … [the] wetlands, that scares me because we’re losing [Great Salt] Lake,” Durfee told the board during the meeting, held on an early Tuesday morning.
Meeting leaders allowed four public comments, which added to the frustrations. Stop the Polluting Port, an advocacy group, held a conference directly afterward with residents to share details about their opposition to the project.
“It doesn't matter what we say, what we want – they're going to do whatever the heck they want to do,” said Mike Croley, a resident who has lived near the proposed Tooele Valley port area for 22 years. "I'll fight it until the end, but I think it's a losing battle."
Developers of both projects and city and county officials have argued the ports will create quality jobs in the community, including working freight and stock for the Twenty Wells project. For the Tooele Valley Port Project, clean air manufacturing and data center technician jobs are expected based on companies who have approached them, said Charles Akerlow, managing director for Zenith Development and the Tooele Valley project lead.
“One company is a manufacturer of electric vehicles. Another would build small 500-square-foot homes for use in low-income housing sites,” Akerlow said. “We have had several who will provide i-cloud services through data storage centers which employ highly skilled technical people.”
They haven’t yet been approached by companies that are trans-loading facilities, but he said the site is “well-suited” for that.
Some residents, however, said that's not much of a positive.
“They're not jobs that you could sustain a family and live off of,” said Kyle Mathews, who lives near the Twenty Wells project.
The median pay for freight and stock jobs in Utah is $35,400 a year, according to the state’s Department of Workforce Services. The median sales price of a home in Tooele County as of February 2024 is nearly $463,000, according to the Tooele County Association of Realtors.
Tooele County resident Kyle Mathews, who lives near the recently approved Twenty Wells inland port project, posing for a photo on his property on February 27, 2024. (Photo credit: Xiangyao “Axe” Tang)
Akerlow said it’s too early to say how many jobs the Tooele Valley development will create, but estimated the “current property size could generate as many as 1,500 jobs.”
Mathews, who opposes both of the developments, said he worries the projects will lead to industrial sprawl across the area. People, he said, don’t want to live in a “concrete jungle of warehouses.”
“Who wants that in their backyard?” Mathews said. “We're not an industrial community. We're not even really a suburb community – we’re a rural community.”
Bryson Anderson, one of Eddington’s neighbors, said people settle in the area to get away from noise in the city, railroads and traffic.
“[This project] kind of defeats the purpose of coming out here,” Anderson said. “It’s a neighborhood street, and it’s not going to be a neighborhood street anymore.”
The Utah Inland Port Authority has argued their inland port project sites, planned for across the state, will help Utah’s environment and economy because they support more rail infrastructure. But, the project has faced backlash since it was first created in 2018, which led to protests shuttering board meetings and ending in arrests.
Opponents of the ports have argued the projects will have a negative impact beyond neighborhood changes, including further threatening air and water quality across the Wasatch Front.
In a 2023 report, Stop the Polluting Port and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment said the ports are the biggest threat to Great Salt Lake’s wetlands, which are important to preserve in order to save the shrinking lake.
Deeda Seed, who volunteers with Stop the Polluting Port, said the coalition is already looking into taking legal action related to the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act as part of the actions around Tooele’s port projects.
“There might be litigation hooks for us, and we're looking for those because that is one way that is one way to stop the harm,” Seed said.
Tooele County, in general, has more unique water issues since they are not a part of a water district and their wells, which much of Tooele Valley homes rely on, have already started to run dry, according to the 2023 report.
Jonny Vasic, executive director of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, said his concerns about the Utah inland port projects stem from the small number of environmental assessments, human health risk assessments and west-side assessments.
An aerial photo of the recently approved Tooele Valley inland port project, which many local residents oppose, on March 15, 2024. (Photo credit: Xiangyao “Axe” Tang)
Several environmental assessments, including a wetlands mitigation study, have been completed for the Tooele Valley project, Akerlow said.
The 2023 report details that all Utah inland port developments could increase air pollution, noise and light pollution, and the use of pesticides, which could negatively impact nearby wetlands, the ecosystem and people who live close by.
The report noted that noise pollution is the second largest environmental cause of human health disorders after air pollution.
Artificial light exposure at night, which these projects will contribute to, can “negatively affect human health, increasing risks for heart disease, obesity, depression, sleep disorders, diabetes, breast cancer, childbirth complications and more,” according to Dark Sky.
Vasic said, regardless of the specifics of how bad the environmental impacts are, one thing is for sure—“there is no such thing as a clean port.”
“Any port that's ever come in increases diesel pollution by a great deal because more trucks are coming and going, increased noise pollution, … increased light pollution,” Vasic said. “All of those things have health risks associated with them.”
The Tooele Valley port project, located near the I-80 Burmester exit and one-fourth mile south of Great Salt Lake, sits on about 250 acres. It is, however, likely to increase in size, possibly as much as double, said Akerlow.
Akerlow said the port will include “light manufacturing” warehousing but didn’t share more details. Many residents said they are frustrated it’s still unclear what exactly these warehouses will include.
“How can you guys get funding, get approval for something you haven’t fully figured out?” Eddington said.
Utility work is in the early stages, including building a new road, setting up gas and electricity and drilling a new well. Akerlow said utility work should be finished by the end of 2024.
Although the project area includes some wetlands, Akerlow said they’re not planning to build anything on them. But Seed, who is also the public lands senior campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, said there’s still “obvious harm to the ecosystem” if you build near wetlands.
“You're disrupting everything, paving it over with concrete, depleting water resources and bringing polluting trucks in and out,” she said.
According to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, the wetlands surrounding Great Salt Lake are “of international importance,” especially since some estimate over 90% of Utah’s original wetlands have been destroyed.
“Wetlands play an incredibly important role and keeping all of us healthy,” said Seed. “They filter water, they help keep our air clean, they suppress dust.”
The Twenty Wells project covers about 500 acres and builds upon the Lakeview Business Park, a warehouse complex the Romney Group plans to develop. Josh Romney, son of U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, leads the project as the group’s president.
The land doesn’t have any wetlands, according to an environmental assessment conducted by the Utah Inland Port Authority. But an abandoned rail spur that Savage Tooele Railroad plans to rebuild to connect with the Twenty Wells project goes directly through Great Salt Lake wetlands.
As residents and advocacy groups continue to fight inland port development, Seed said she can’t help but feel Tooele residents are “getting rolled over.”
“These poor people who I've gotten to know over the years are going to be the victims of a huge environmental injustice,” she said.
Correction (April 11, 2024) • This story was updated to correct the year the Utah Inland Port Authority was created and added comment from Ben Hart, the director of Utah Inland Port Authority.
Andrew Christiansen, a senior at the University of Utah, wrote this story as part of a College of Humanities journalism course in partnership with the Great Salt Lake Collaborative and Amplify Utah. The collaborative is a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake – and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of our stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.
