Is there actually any measurably decrease in person-person interaction in the real world? Or is it simply a new layer of digital communication layered over it?

I work at a high school. The kids see as much of people as they always seem to have. They still get together on weekends, after school. They're just always ALSO interacting via the netweb with texts and stuff.

Yeah there are lonely people who spend too much time online, but I dont think that, if the net didn't exist, all of them would suddenly be social butterflies (not denying that the net might be an enabling factor to such things though). Yeah I play "Civilization IV" with pals online, but given our busy lives if we didn't play online the alternative was not playing at all.

Perhaps in the long run Digital Social Networking and crap will have more visible effects on first world societies, but now I don't think it's made much of a REAL effect on the simple ammount of people-on-people contact.