If a movie were to be made about the daily interaction of much of today’s youth, that film would most likely feature a large portion of its subjects huddled over laptops, impulsively clicking mouses, surfing — you guessed it — MySpace.

Or perhaps the filmmakers would choose not to focus on that aspect. After all, is spending countless hours staring at a computer screen really that glamorous?

MySpace has been banned from computers in schools across the country, for reasons ranging from risqué content to the page taking up too much bandwidth on computers, but perhaps the most common complaint about the addictive site comes from the users themselves: With all the time they put into MySpace, the less they have dedicated to face-to-face interaction.

“Sometimes it prevents me from talking to people and hanging out with them,” said graduate art history major Emily Barney, 24, who has been a MySpace member since November 2003. “I like MySpace because it helps me keep in touch with friends, but because of that convenience it really prevents me from spending quality time with them.”

MySpace, America’s fourth most popular Web site with more than 70 million members, has become an international breeding ground for the kind of individualized networking that most young people today would rather be within than without. The site is credited with revolutionizing access to the independent music scene, creating an electronic phenomenon of personal expression and making a large portion of face-to-face contact between people a good deal less necessary. Users can create personal profiles, post pictures, songs and videos, and interact with the site’s millions of other users in a variety of ways.

The problems with the online addictions created by such sites as MySpace are similar to complaints that have circulated around excessive television watching. Kids, instead of getting exercise, using their imaginations and socializing the old-fashioned way, have spent so much time in front of a screen that they lose opportunities to develop interpersonal skills and the kind of social building blocks that will serve them later in life. A 2005 Ball State University report shows that the average American spends nine hours a day watching television, surfing the Internet or talking on their cell phones. According to Alexa, an Internet-ranking Web site, MySpace is just behind search engines Yahoo!, Google and MSN in popularity. This means MySpace is getting a lot of daily attention — perhaps too much.

At the end of the day, after all these hours have been logged, many MySpace addicts wonder if they are really any better off spending time on their computer than with their friends themselves.

No one can deny that young Americans crave convenience, that sites such as MySpace provide a service that has been capitalized upon for a reason. It also goes without saying that the opportunity to connect and socialize so efficiently is something that few of us take for granted. Yet, there is only so much intellectual growth and social linkage that can be gleaned from a computer screen. Perhaps tearing ourselves away from our addictions a little bit can help us better appreciate the kind of convenience that MySpace represents.

After all, we wouldn’t want to be considered anything but glamorous in the event we were featured in a movie.