Has the internet replaced person to person contact?

No. Look at our relationship...oops.

Naw, it just adds opportunity.

The internet is for porn.
I thought everyonne knew that.

For the younger (est?) generation, it might be making life different for them, than it was for their parent's generation. The internet is part of the many devices that now allows an individual to practically always "be connected" to friends, acquaintances, strangers. In this type of existence, I wonder if the younger generation is developing a mind that does not think/ponder for itself. Nor, it might not even like spending time alone, as I see so many people walking with a cellphone by their ears.

So, to answer the question, as someone already seems to have implied, it just "enhances" personal contacts; however, it might have replaced a degree of solitary thinking that prior generations knew and appreciated, I believe. It might be conditioning us to believe that "solitude" is an alien condition to be avoided?

the last place i worked had a lot of summer workers who were high school students, i remember once seeing two kids texting each other from one side of the lunch area to the other, a distance of about 50 feet

Of course there's the down side to the internet and cell phones. However, it may be restoring something we had lost in the course of modern development. Our society has become increasingly splintered with the development of things like the automobile and the television. Ancient society was much more reliant upon group and family ties, in some societies everyone slept in one room.
Maybe that the internet is restoring some of these individual connections after a fashion.
A hundred years ago most Americans lived their entire lives in a radius of 25 miles, give or take. Childhood bonds were much more easily maintained in such circumstances. We lost that for awhile. My own obsevation, having a 20 something daughter, leads me to believe that the internet has been a boon to restoring those connections. For myself, it has made possible the restoration of some of those connections, albeit of somewhat less quality than had they been so easily maintained as is now possible.

Ya... It's a condom for the mind... It is easy to keep the current disease from getting under your skin... If you let people easily into your life you find there are a fair share of worthless or crazy assholes out there... The internet is a good way of relating without letting people into a position where they can dominate your life, really, destroy you or ruin you... I care too much and love too easily... I want to keep the personal personal and the private, private... The internet is public, and though I often reveal too much, it is not without limits..