"There are already experiments going on with digital girlfriends, "

Japan is always a leader in this technology:

The Japanese men who prefer virtual girlfriends to sex.

Also, since I've been itching for a place to slip this in (ahem)...

If we want to be serious for a moment, I think part of the problem is the deteriorating social skills of younger people. Even phone contact is practically dead; many millennials and younger are text only. Aziz Ansari covered this pretty well in his book Modern Romance, where he discusses how the younger the group you look at, the more they are paralyzed by even routine romantic situation due to a lack of socialization and social skills.

Add to that widespread narcissism from social media, and you have all the ingredients for the "asexual" step of the Mouse Utopia, right before they moved on to infanticide and cannibalism (which, hopefully, Japan will not be a leader in soon).