As his teacher drones on and on in his 7p.m. class, senior business management major James Sandkuhle, 23, pursues his addiction to the website connecting millions of young people around the nation - MySpace. He notices he has received a new comment in the five-minute period since the last time he has checked. "Woohoo!" He now feels relieved that at least someone is thinking of him, bringing validation to his overworked and intense college life. It makes the boring class go by much quicker.

MySpace, originally launched in January of 2004 after a four-month public testing period, now has over 67 million members across the nation. The community grows by about 250,000 members daily, according to Dani Dudeck, a MySpace spokeswoman. MySpace has created an enormous buzz among Generation Y.

MySpace is a website where anyone can join (with exception to children under the age of 14) and create whatever they want within reason. The first step is to create a profile that has a section for your name, basic info, background and lifestyle. You have the opportunity to post your own photos, videos and blogs about whatever you’re feeling at the moment. The only limitations are offensive material, including nudity and obscenity. If the MySpace mediators catch you, they will either give you a warning or terminate your account.

Sandkuhle became a member of this virtual community in February of 2005 after a friend had told him about it. Enticed by the idea of personalizing and publicly expressing himself, he caught on to the coding (which allows the personalization of fonts and graphics) and his page was up and running in no time.

Initially not fond of the idea of adding a song to his main page, he has learned to appreciate the new option, and incorporated “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol playing softly across his outlined black page. His addiction grew to a new level within the past several months, when he began to notice his homework piling up – a result of checking his MySpace around 30 times a day.

“If I have an Internet connection, then I am checking my MySpace as often as I am doing homework,” says Sandkuhle.

Dr. Lorraine Granit, a practicing psychologist of 35 years, explains what qualifies an addiction.

“The guidelines I use for any addiction is if something uses so much time and energy that basic personal needs [earning an income, doing homework, bathing, sleeping, chores, for example] are not met,” says Granit.

Sandkuhle uses the site to unwind from the stresses of school and life. He likes being able to reconnect with the social world and contact whomever he wants whenever he wants. But his hobby has quickly turned into an addiction. Sandkuhle uses MySpace as a central means of communication. He even considered dressing up as “Tom,” the co-founder of MySpace, for Halloween. Sandkuhle escapes the virtual world for a short while on the weekends, but can’t stay away for too long, and ends up back online at the wee hours of the night.

“I drunk MySpace people,” Sandkuhle says. This is similar to the idea of drunk dialing (which is when you have the bright idea of calling everyone in your phone book after too much alcohol). Drunk MySpacing is when you find yourself sitting at a computer in a belligerent state, attempting to type comments to others that may not always come out the way you intend.

“It’s a little less annoying to them, and you don’t wake them up in the middle of the night,” he says.

Sandkuhle could spend all day searching for people who he has lost touch with over the years. The craziest thing he’s ever seen is a picture of the words “I love you,” with the “love” replaced with a man lifting up his testicles to form the shape of a heart – something that MySpace could probably be labeled as obscenity.

Although MySpace has taken action in some ways to prevent illegal activity by creating a privacy section, the web site cannot prevent everything.

Leah Reinhart is the mother of two children ages seven and 16. She realized her daughter’s addiction to MySpace and quickly took action. She created an account and signed on as Maria Gomez so she could fool her daughter into believing she was someone else. From then on, her plan was to get all the juicy details of her daughter’s life.

“I would see who smokes pot at whose parties,” says Reinhart. “I also saw one of my daughter’s friends saying, ‘I love you cause you took care of me when I was high.’”

Reinhart admits that when she first created an account she became obsessed with it for a while, indulging in the mindless activities such as searching for people. Then the realization hit her: MySpace was a complete waste of time – and potentially dangerous.

Others find the website enticing and a good way to reconnect with people they have lost touch with over the years. Sherylyn Koerner, 22, from Walnut Creek, finds herself on MySpace for long periods of time, taking her away from her work life. She surfs the site from behind the counter of the boutique she works at.

“It’s like having an open diary that all of your friends can read,” says Koerner. “It’s not necessarily too personal so you can share what you want.”

Koerner originally created her account back in 2004 when her boyfriend at the time told her it was a good way to stay in touch with people who live far away.

“He had one and I thought it was really, really lame,” Koerner says. “But then I was really bored at work one day, and I just made one up.”

Quickly becoming an addiction, now she can’t get enough of it. She checks hers nearly a dozen times a day. Her phone recently broke so she currently uses MySpace to communicate with her friends, checking it more often than her voicemail. About a year ago, she even used MySpace to discover her boyfriend was cheating on her. Although she has somewhat tainted memories of this web site, it still remains a big part of her life.

“I love it but I hate it,” she says, “It’s like looking in someone’s mail. You are aware of it but you don’t want to know about it. It causes unnecessary drama between people.”

Dr. David Gard, a San Francisco State psychology professor, acknowledges the potential exploitation and addiction by using MySpace, but remains positive about its communicative capabilities.

“My best guess is that kids will adapt to this new technology in much the same way that people adapted to the use of the telephone and email,” Gard says.

Both Sandkuhle and Koerner began the quest of MySpace with the simple thought of passing time, but now they have both logged onto a virtual addiction.