SocialMedia.Utah.Gov was deployed and made available to the public at noon on March 24th in support of Governor Cox’s initiative and bill signing of Senate Bill 152 and House Bill 311 to help protect children and youth from the negative effects of social media. The website provides information about new laws that regulate social media companies and research on the effects of social media. It empowers parents with information, education and tools to protect youth from the harmful effects of social media and provides an avenue for individuals to get regular email implementation updates.
Many individuals played key roles in bringing this effort to fruition in a very short time period. Eduardo Mendivil completed all the coding and was critical in the design, content and style of the page. As Carolyn Dennis explained, “This site would not have been live for the signing without Eduardo. He not only did the coding, he designed and styled our rough ideas into a professional and beautiful resource for the people of Utah.” Carolyn Dennis was the Commerce point of contact with agency Executive Director Margaret Busse, Katie Hart and Melanie Hall providing guidance on content. Natalie Pyne was the Governor’s Office point of contact and provided content and resources from Aimee Winder Newton and Jennifer Napier-Pearce. Destiny Calvano organized DTS personnel and ensured technology resources and capacity was sufficient to meet the technology need. Conception, design, content and deployment were completed within 5 business days and the website was deployed just before Governor Cox signed the legislation into law the afternoon of March 24th 2023.
