Are online relationships easier?

In my culture, food has always been of tantamount importance. Some of my best memories growing up were of my grandmother, aunt and mom working into the wee hours preparing mountains of food for someone's wedding, birthday or a special holiday. Our house was fairly centrally-located and since my mom was the eldest of 7 siblings and my grandmother lived with us, aunts, uncles and cousins stopped by every evening and on Sundays to visit or share a meal with us. Even family outings to the beach never involved sandwiches. There was always delicious and abundant food. When I got married, I carried on the tradition. We've moved several times within the state of Florida and wherever we've moved, I've tried to make our home a center of hospitality. I enjoy cooking and feeding people....until recently. We moved to Tallahassee three years ago and I immediately had neighbors and church friends over for dinner...almost every weekend for the first several months and then on a more intermittent basis but still fairly regularly. At work, if I knew of a co-worker who did not have family or anywhere to go for Christmas or Thanksgiving, I would invite them over. My husband did the same for people on his bowling league. For the first time in my life, I experienced people who would either refuse the invitation to be alone during the holidays or who accepted the invitation but did not call and did not show for dinner. Aside from being inconsiderate and just plain rude, I found this unexplainable lack of social grace, discouraging. Gradually, my entertaining tapered and once I started grad school, it came to a screeching halt due to lack of time and disposable energy. I saw one of my neighbors tonight and she said, "I miss your cooking". I told her I was trying to quit. Maybe its just Tallahassee or that people are becoming more withdrawn and less social in general for whatever reason. Personally, I no longer feel the need to connect as much in a face-to-face environment. My coursework, husband, kids, occasional neighborly exchange and online interaction seem satisfying enough. I was emailing someone this weekend and wrote, "Online interaction is so much easier and requires so little energy". Especially when it's casual and NOT required for working on a graded project! Kind of sad though, don't you think?