Definitely easier.
For a moment I'll ignore the point of meeting up with people and focus solely on people that only chat online and never meet.
The anonymity the internet provides is so easy. They can develop someone they've always wanted to be, act "confident" when in real life they're not, develop social skills such as flirting or ease of discussion using just the internet. In short, the internet is a gateway to reinventing oneself if they so wish.
But obviously with the level of anonymity it's open to so much abuse. People who harbour aggression and maybe don't show it in real life due to confidence issues will just let rip on the internet, and can become very threatening due to the fact it won't be reciprocated (whereas in "real life" it will be).
Also; people forget that the people they're speaking to are actually real people with lives. It's much easier to insult some faceless "screen name" than it is to go up to someone on the street and call them names. Sometimes it can really get out of hand when bullying start, because often the person doing it doesn't consider that this person has a life, a family, memories and feelings.
I remember reading a story about a teenager who killed himself cos his online girlfriend didn't want to chat to him one night. Obviously he held that "relationship" closer than she did. After he'd killed himself and the police had done their investigations I remember reading that this girl was severely depressed because she said she felt herself to blame cos she never took it seriously or anything as it was just online. That's one way it can become really dangerous.
In terms of meeting others, I think it's definitely easier to do so.
The main difficulty in meeting new people is to go up to them and chat - social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook help this naturally come along and can begin communications. Meeting up is the easy bit after this initial interaction. I imagine that's why so many people cheat because of the internet - they get the hard bit out of the way.
Edit: I am myself online. Maybe a little bit more confident, but that's because I'm hardly going to be shy when typing
