Great post. Last May, my wife and I decided to attend Kilby Block Party in SLC on a whim. In the course of the weekend, we met a really great local couple, who we later found out are directly involved with the group who put on the annual music festival. In other words, good people to know. We've become very good friends with them and their group of friends in the 14 months since. His wife and her friend joined my wife and I in Charleston this April for High Water Fest (they're big music fans like we are). We also went up to SLC last Sept for the War on Drugs/National co-bill show and spent a long weekend with that group. We also went to Kilby this year. Anyway, great folks.
They are all ex-Mormons and we have had some very interesting conversations with them. Most are from bigger families (4-6 kids) and in almost every instance, they're the only sibling who has left the church. They're all around my age or a few years younger (I'm 52). To a person, they all said the main thing that made them decide to leave the church was the internet becoming readily available in the late 90's/early 00's. These people are forbidden to read newspapers/magazines (even when on missions) and don't know anything that isn't spoon-fed to them by the Church. But the internet is the wild, wild west and they finally were able to read all this stuff from the outside about Mormonism and it forced them to really take a introspective look at it. So they left. They admit it is 100% a cult. One interesting thing the woman told us when she and her husband came down to Dallas last fall (he was coming for work so she tagged along and we dragged them down to the State Fair on a Monday night) is that they grow up being told things like the sky is yellow not blue -- shit like that gets repeated enough and it becomes the new truth (see Fox News and other MAGA-adjacent peddlers of disinformation, Russia/KGB, etc). I'm not quite explaining it right but essentially elders are teaching an alternative reality.
You're right about the crisis facing the church. Members are leaving in big numbers. The population of SLC is only like 20-25% Mormon now. Same for the county as a whole. However, if you go one county south toward Provo and it's in the 80's and higher maybe. It's crazy town down that way.