I think that, as Jim alludes to here, social media venues dominate communication these days. Who among us, even those who DO participate here, don't also have some form of other communication?

I have text messaging on my phone, and I communicate on a nearly daily basis with my own family, those I work with, and a few of my closest friends and loved ones. That doesn't dominate my day, but it does take up a measurable amount of time.

The sheer amount of Email that I STILL receive, in spite of efforts to change signatures and reduce footprints where spammers and lurkers can blast messages at me, probably still wastes more of my time than anything else. I probably AVERAGE between 300-600 Emails a day (slightly less on holidays, but not that much less). If I ignore it, I risk missing something that actually is useful when I try to wipe things out, and therefore, I try to keep the number of outstanding unread messages, spam or not, under 100 whenever possible, so that I can scan them, remove all the unwanted ones, then actually read only material that is actually of interest.

There's the social media Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and related sites. I don't spend hours in any of them, but even a 1/2 hour a day adds up.

When you put it all together, along with having to work more hours for less income these days, all of these factors contribute to less social contact in this kind of forum. It doesn't go away completely, but the participation level goes way down, and understandably so.