How Many ABDLs Are There In The World?

This is something I have thought about many times, and to start with I shall say I don't have the answer. Estimating how many people are there in ABDL in the world is tricky at the very least. There are no official studies that can give us the number of how many people have an interest in ABDL, but this does not mean there is no data at all to look at!

To start with, we could look at the online communities, the sales of ABDL products and other interests that are niche and related. But because this is not something that people talk about openly it won't be easy (or even possible) to study.

Looking at Online Communities?

Looking at Online Communities, the ABDL subreddit has over 200,00 members, and a lot more people would read it without joining.

ABDL has many platforms and forums, from ADISC to several groups in Fetlife and also in Discord, with thousands of active participants.

It would be good to get to know if ABDL internet pages have grown in visits over the years, but I don't think I can find any data on that. Besides, not everyone who is ABDL participates in online spaces, so the number of people in these groups only represents a fraction of the actual community.

I can imagine that just one in ten ABDLs actively joins online groups, the global number could be much higher than what we see online.

Can I Estimate from Market Data?

ABDL nappy brands like Tykables, Rearz, and ABUniverse would not publish exact sales numbers as far as I know, but I tried to find date on the overall adult diaper market.

The adult diaper industry is worth around $20,7 billion worldwide, and most of them are for medical use, but what proportion would be for ABDL? No idea, but even if it was 1%, that would mean millions of buyers all over the world. Okay, maybe is not even a 1%, but the ABDL niche diaper brands seem to be here to stay, even if they are a small niche.

Where Else Can I Look for Data?

I have not found any data on studies about the prevalence of ABDL, but there have been

studies on paraphilias and niche interests. Of course, not all ABDL can be considered 'paraphilic' or remotely sexual, but at least there are some studies on other niche interests that can still give us a comparison.

There is one popular study on some Italian online ABDL communities, that tells how difficult it is to define how common ABDL behaviours are, despite the difficulty of doing this study because most won't want to talk about it or let anyone know.

Studying paraphilias can overlap with ABDL, but as not all ABDL is paraphilic, again, there is no real way to know. Apparently, 45% of the population has had at least an interest in one paraphilic category (Joyal & Carpentier), and a lot less have really engaged in it. The same study mentions that 4-5% of people have a foot fetish. If we do an exercise of imagination and estimate ABDL interest was just a 0.5% of the population, that would already mean 40 million people! and if we think that is too much, just a 0.1% of the population would be 8 million people!

But of course, I digress. At the moment, there are no statistics about it, we can just speculate.

Are ABDLs More Common in Certain Countries?

It might seem like ABDL is more common in Western countries, possibly because of differences in cultural openness and internet access. In many other countries, people might simply be even less likely to discuss or explore ABDL interests openly. That doesn’t mean the interest isn’t there—just that it’s harder to see.

However, we do know that ABDL exists worldwide based on online engagement and product sales. For example, I can see that Reddit has ABDL forums where people from various countries participate, and ABDL products are available in a variety of countries, so they must be selling there!

So, how many ABDLs are there in the world?

Well… we don’t really know! There are not studies on this that can present us with the data of it, and we can just imagine how big or mall this is based on internet engagement and some market data. Perhaps, getting to imagine by comparing with studies about other related communities.

My impression is that if we put together the ABDL people who are online and more or less “visible” with others who never go online about it or don’t have internet presence, there are more ABDL people of what most people assume. And it’s probably growing in visibility, resources and hopefully, acceptance.

This is very important because knowing that you are not alone makes a big difference.

You may be engaging with the community online, or just buying products, or having an interest in ABDL, but you know know that you are part of something much bigger than you might realise.

What do you think? Do these numbers sound right to you?

I am happy to read your thoughts!