Is face to face chess a dying activity?

Recently I got a strange, or strange sounding to me at least, request
when someone asked me if I knew of anyplace that sold chess sets
locally.

Seems they wanted to get a new one and could not find any stores that
sold them, they tried Barnes and Noble, Books A Million, Toys R Us,
Sears,
and a few others, and all said they don't carry them or had stopped
carrying them.

The only one that did was Wal-Mart (!!!) and they only had a three
sets which the
person in the toy department said was about all they ever carried now.

Which brings me to my original question, as well as wondering if this
means that
computers have changed things so much that this old social activity is
going away?

We’ve heard about how cell phones and computers seem to be putting up
barriers
between people so there is more and more “connecting” and less and
less actual
instances of people getting together and connecting like human beings.

How sad.

This might seem a small thing, but then so are swollen lymph glands,
and you
know what that warning can lead to.

Terry