How Many Of Use World Wide

[StillNDiapers]

So i was wondering, Does anyone the number of Adult Babies and Diaper Lovers that exist world wide that we know off. to get a number of how many of us exist.

[Sophie ♥]

Well... we're just shy of 10,000 people on this site.

That being said, of course there are the just curious or people who make two sn's or something like that... but there are also teens that are into this stuff not allowed on this site as well as people without computers and people in denial and people who don't know our community exists. And there are those who join other diaper forums instead.

I would say over 10,000 at the very least.

-Sophie

[wetvinyl]

I read somewhere (don't ask me where/when) that it's probably 1 of every 1000 people. Yeah that sounds like a number somebody just pulled out of their ass (and seeing as I read it on some ABDL board, somebody probably had a slight bias).

But think about it: Most everybody you see on the street has some secret thing that rocks their otherwise-vanilla world. When you consider the range of things that get people off-- from mainstream S/M and bondage, down to watching women crush bugs under their shoes-- wearing diapers seems pretty middle-of-the road.

So let's go with that 1-in-a-1000. 6 billion people / 1000 = 6 million.

But let's assume that there are some First and Second World cultures where 1/1000 is way too high. We'll say those account for half the world population, and we'll cut their ratio to... oh whatever, 1/20,000.

(3 billion / 20,000 = 150,000) + (3 billion / 1000 = 3 million) = 3,150,000. About 0.05% of the world's population.

Ok, that's enough math for me today.

wv

[superdiaperbaby]

I read somewhere (don't ask me where/when) that it's probably 1 of every 1000 people. Yeah that sounds like a number somebody just pulled out of their ass (and seeing as I read it on some ABDL board, somebody probably had a slight bias).

But think about it: Most everybody you see on the street has some secret thing that rocks their otherwise-vanilla world. When you consider the range of things that get people off-- from mainstream S/M and bondage, down to watching women crush bugs under their shoes-- wearing diapers seems pretty middle-of-the road.

So let's go with that 1-in-a-1000. 6 billion people / 1000 = 6 million.

But let's assume that there are some First and Second World cultures where 1/1000 is way too high. We'll say those account for half the world population, and we'll cut their ratio to... oh whatever, 1/20,000.

(3 billion / 20,000 = 150,000) + (3 billion / 1000 = 3 million) = 3,150,000. About 0.05% of the world's population.

Ok, that's enough math for me today.

wv

Back in the day I remembers seeing a stat that there were 15,000 members of DPF. Now, there are more than that but given the English speaking computer users it is probably accurate. At the most I would double it just for errors sake and say there are 30,000 AB/DLs in the nation. Then take Japan, China and Europe and the rest of the world and add another 100,000 people because the US seems to be the most ABCentric of all the nations.

So 130,000 AB/DLs in the world sounds pretty accurate and is probably a little too high, unless you count people who wear a diaper for curiousities sake, then it is probably much higher.

SDB

[enfant]

At the most I would double it just for errors sake and say there are 30,000 AB/DLs in the nation.

So, you reckon fully half of all AB/DL's have been members of DPF, and a third have joined DailyDiapers? That seems like a gigantic stretch to me.

As it happens, I'm the one who came up with the estimate of one in a thousand that wetvinyl was quoting. (Actually my estimate was between 1:1000 and 1:2000.) And DPF membership is one of the places I got that estimate: You see, I polled lot of online AB/DL's from a mailing list and asked how many of them had ever been DPF members, and the answer was around 5%. If 5% of the infantilist population has joined DPF, and DPF's roster has 15,000 names on it, that means there are 300,000 infantilsts in the English-speaking parts of the world--or about one person in a thousand. (Of course, DPF members might be underrepresented in the mailing list membership... but by that much? And anyway it seems just as likely to me that they're overrepresented; both groups would select from the set of people who know they're not alone with the fetish and want to talk to other people about it.)

Another source was the arbitron statistics for the old alt.sex.fetish.diapers newsgroup, which had 25,000 readers at its peak, something like one out of every few hundred USENET readers. Even allowing for the fact that some people were probably just reading every group that had "sex" in the name, that still suggests a surprisingly large number of people with an interest in the subject.

My home town has about 50,000 people living in it. At aby.com you can search for member profiles by city, and there are nine aby.com members living here. Now, not everyone's computer literate, and even among those who are, aby.com isn't to everyone's taste--so it seems unlikely that every AB/DL in my zipcode is an aby.com member. Besides, most of them are in the 20-30 age range, but there's no reason to suppose that age cohort is any more likely to have infantilist leanings than the 55-65 age bracket, right? So I'm going to guess, very conservatively, that there are 4-5 times as many infantilists in this town as aby.com members. And so once again we get one person in a thousand.

Wetvinyl of course has a good point about people in poverty-stricken countries not having a lot of leisure to indulge in fetishism. So I doubt if the 1:1000 ratio holds throughout the world. But I'd be astonished if the total number were as low as 130,000: I'd bet there are more than that in the US alone.

[wetvinyl]

As it happens, I'm the one who came up with the estimate of one in a thousand that wetvinyl was quoting. (Actually my estimate was between 1:1000 and 1:2000.)

In that case, I apologize for the "pulled a number out of their ass" statement, enfant! The stat work you did in arriving at that estimate was a lot more credible than the "um, I guess 1/20,000 is about right" dart-throwing I was doing

Wetvinyl of course has a good point about people in poverty-stricken countries not having a lot of leisure to indulge in fetishism. So I doubt if the 1:1000 ratio holds throughout the world. But I'd be astonished if the total number were as low as 130,000: I'd bet there are more than that in the US alone.

That sounds about right... and about fits with my 0.05% guesstimate (US population 300,000,000 x 0.05 = 150,000).

wv

[Santiago]

Outside of conducting a poll of the general population, all of those estimates are pie in the sky making huge assumptions that can easily make the margin of error high enough to make the result pretty meaningless.

[enfant]

Outside of conducting a poll of the general population, all of those estimates are pie in the sky making huge assumptions that can easily make the margin of error high enough to make the result pretty meaningless.

I don't agree. You can get a meaningful "order of magnitude" estimate. That is, if I estimate that it's "on the order of 1:1000", that means I'd be very surprised, given the available data, if it were as high as 1:100 and equally surprised if it were as low as 1:10,000.

I went and looked at aby.com again, thinking since my home town is a bit small it might not be a big enough sample. I looked at some bigger towns, and then some of the smaller states. San Francisco: one aby.com member per 7,000 population. Seattle: 1 per 4,000. Portland: 1 per 7,000. (The big cities are probably inflated somewhat by people in neighboring towns saying they live in, for instance, the "San Francisco area"). San Jose: 1 per 20,000. State of Alaska: one per 20,000. State of Wyoming: one per 25,000. State of Montana: one per 18,000. State of North Dakota: one per 27,000. State of Vermont: one per 26,000.

Now, if the ratio were as low as 1:20,000, then we'd have to suppose that virtually every infantilist in all those rural states has joined one relatively obscure AB/DL website (which doesn't even show up on the first page of google listings for "diaper fetish" or "adult baby", and which disproportionately though not exclusively attracts gay men), and filled out a profile. There's just no way. Even supposing that half of all the AB's have done so is a stretch. Frankly I'd find it astonishing if it were even as high as 10%... which would get us to a ratio of 1:2000, the low end of the range I estimated. I wouldn't try to push it to any more significant figures than that, but I think 1:1000 is the right order of magnitude.

[diaprbayb]

Lets ask Mr Owl?

Easier to count those who don't like diapers in some way.

I witnessed the fall of DPF, I found DD through them. Iluvdiapers.com too. long before GUI's

[superdiaperbaby]

I don't agree. You can get a meaningful "order of magnitude" estimate. That is, if I estimate that it's "on the order of 1:1000", that means I'd be very surprised, given the available data, if it were as high as 1:100 and equally surprised if it were as low as 1:10,000.

I went and looked at aby.com again, thinking since my home town is a bit small it might not be a big enough sample. I looked at some bigger towns, and then some of the smaller states. San Francisco: one aby.com member per 7,000 population. Seattle: 1 per 4,000. Portland: 1 per 7,000. (The big cities are probably inflated somewhat by people in neighboring towns saying they live in, for instance, the "San Francisco area"). San Jose: 1 per 20,000. State of Alaska: one per 20,000. State of Wyoming: one per 25,000. State of Montana: one per 18,000. State of North Dakota: one per 27,000. State of Vermont: one per 26,000.

Now, if the ratio were as low as 1:20,000, then we'd have to suppose that virtually every infantilist in all those rural states has joined one relatively obscure AB/DL website (which doesn't even show up on the first page of google listings for "diaper fetish" or "adult baby", and which disproportionately though not exclusively attracts gay men), and filled out a profile. There's just no way. Even supposing that half of all the AB's have done so is a stretch. Frankly I'd find it astonishing if it were even as high as 10%... which would get us to a ratio of 1:2000, the low end of the range I estimated. I wouldn't try to push it to any more significant figures than that, but I think 1:1000 is the right order of magnitude.

There is a high probability of estimation errors. Are you taking into account people signing up to these services more than once? Like getting banned and then resigning up as someone else? Or people who have multiple email addresses? My hometown had only 1 person, me, signed up out of 100,000 people. When I was in another town of 200,000 people there were only 2 I could find online and one of them was me. Large metroplexes have more ABs just because they are large population centers. In this day and age, people in the US have computers and the internet and someone into diapers would have a strong desire to join a group. Also, what about the people who lie? There is a larger population of AB aware and AB curious out there who would join these groups to lurk only. How many people are signed up who are just curious?

Bottom line, there are too many assumptions to make about our online population and offline population to estimate accurately. What you can do is gage the minimum number of people who participate in groups and discussions and get a baseline, besides that everything else is pure speculation.

SDB

[Frink]

After months of research I have produced what I feel to be an accurate estimate of the number of ABDLs worldwide:

More than thirty-six, less than twenty billion.

[wetvinyl]

After months of research I have produced what I feel to be an accurate estimate of the number of ABDLs worldwide:

More than thirty-six, less than twenty billion.

Or: How many Angel Fluffs can dance on the head of a diaper pin.

(That may be a different thread.)

wv

[enfant]

There is a high probability of estimation errors.

Of course there is, and that's why I'm only asserting a gross order of magnitude. "Somewhere between 100 and 10,000" is a really big error bar. It's unfortunately difficult to know with a higher level of precision because you'll never get enough people answering a survey and giving honest answers. But you can figure the order of magnitude with a reasonably high level of confidence.

We know for sure the prevalence can't be less than 1/10,000 because the membership figures in DPF, aby.com, DailyDiapers and other such organizations wouldn't pass the smell test. And I'd bet it's at least five to ten times higher than that, because I've personally met a lot of AB's who aren't joiners. 1/100 seems equally improbable because there'd be a lot more organizations like DPF, aby.com and DailyDiapers--and I'd bet it's at least ten to twenty times lower than that. The range of 1/1000 to 1/2000 I find plausible.

Large metroplexes have more ABs just because they are large population centers

More AB's, sure--but there's very little reason to suppose they have more ABs per capita. It's just that people in larger population centers probably have somewhat more opportunity and/or willingness to join groups. Smaller towns and rural areas, the AB's are probably more likely to think they're alone. But that doesn't mean they aren't there.

[Santiago]

I think your order of magnitude theory also relies too much on assumption that there are not duplicate members - and there is no real way to know how many there are - and so I think it could easily be 1 in 10000. Any data derived from assumptions about internet membership is going to be very volatile - and horribly unreliable to the point that it is practically useless. My common sense tells me that 1:100 is way too many, but I also do not find 1:1000 to be a common sense realistic figure either, but then I have no good data to make a conclusion, and so perhaps it is 1:50 for all I know.

[wetvinyl]

... people in larger population centers probably have somewhat more opportunity and/or willingness to join groups. Smaller towns and rural areas, the AB's are probably more likely to think they're alone.

Hmmm... perhaps. Living in an urban setting lends a mindset of being "lost in the masses", which may encourage the search for specialized "kinky" peer-groups-- whereas rural folks, living in an environment where everybody knows everybody (and everything), may feel more closeted and hesitant to explore.

But the interwebs™ changed everything.

Subtract net access, and even in a city you'd think you're alone. (In any of the alt papers here in Boston, I've never seen an AB/DL-directed ad.) Conversely, if you're in a wired rural area with the ability to do a rudimentary Google search, you can easily find and join the community.

Give both of them a net connection, and ABDL City Mouse and ABDL Country Mouse can be equals!

wv

[curiositykilledthecat]

I hear good stories about the Japanese obsession with infantillism.

Thus why like Japanese girls. The Japanese are very open/perverted, depending on your take.

[enfant]

Well, aby.com requires full members to post pictures of themselves, so duplication should be fairly easy to spot. I'm sure there's a little bit, but a cursory glance at several cities with ten or more members turns up very few (or else a lot of people posting pictures of strangers). I'm sure there are some duplicates and that they inflate the membership by a few percent, but I really doubt it's as much as a factor of two, much less ten.

I'm not surprised people find the estimate implausible--we all get so used to thinking of ourselves as uniquely freaky and all alone in the world. But it's really not that crazy to suppose that in a city the size of, say, Dallas-Fort Worth, there'd be five hundred or a thousand people fantasizing about diapers and buying the occasional pack of Depends for fun. It's not really that many.

[paddi]

I recon the people into this in some way or other is possibly 1 in a 100 more than yo may think.

Im not baseing my assumption on this but for instance my sister works in a well known branch of a british chemist, usually on the counter nearest the incontinence items, but she said it's amazing the amount of men under the age 40 who purchase this sort of stuff, sometimes 10 or so men a day, She has also obsevered the same men walking up and down the baby goods aisles, for the size of the town where she is that is quite a significant number, I thinks.

[Sophie ♥]

Bottom line is we will never know. Surveys dont reach the entire world and no matter if they are anonymous or not, not everyone will answer truthfully.

Let's say... there is a higher number of people who are into diapers over getting arrested... but a lower number of people who are into diapers over eating a cookie.

I would also like to point out that taking my high school population into consideration... out of just the ABs and DLs or people even curious about diapers as a lifestyle or fetish that i am actually aware of, we exceed the 1 out of 1000 ratio. Taking into account that I am not even friends with 90% of the school and that a good portion of my friends that are into it most likely wouldn't tell me, i'd say the midteen to young adult population must be higher than 1 in 1000.

-Sophie

[diaprbayb]

Don't forget those of us who eat cookies while in diapers.

[Sophie ♥]

I fit into that catagory.

-Sophie

[anned]

I have noticed that there is a higher number in some cities and lower in others.

But i also noticed the cities with higher number of AB/DLs are also cities with higher numbers of the gay community.

And what i have seen is that in the gay community the % of AB/DLs are about the same.

This makes trying to use the numbers in cities misleading.

the only other thing i believe is that the number of AB/DLs is growing as the younger generation find out from sites like this that there are other out there.

40 years ago i would have never heard about AB/DLs and there were no disposable diapers for adults.

and for many years DPF was the only way to find out you were not alone.

Now any teen with access to a computer and the temptation to wear diapers would find out within weeks to a couple of months that we exist.

My nearest guess is somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 with AB/DLs tendencies worldwide. and about 40% do not have internet or live in countries that they could never reveal that they wear diapers.

I note the lack of people from china and a few other countries even though i know people in china are known to wear on trains during travel seasons. and i suspect they are monitored so about other subjects that few would post anything ABDL on the internet.

I also know of a number of ABDL sites in spanish in south america yet you seldom see anyone from south america on english web sites.

You find some if you type "amantes de pañal de bebé adultos" into google.

I suspect there are a number of countries the filter ABDL sites from there internet

[Saschadzg]

II note the lack of people from china and a few other countries even though i know people in china are known to wear on trains during travel seasons. and i suspect they are monitored so about other subjects that few would post anything ABDL on the internet.

But the Chinese need to be aware of it, since they sell babygirl outfits on ebay.

Kvetinka

[xdiapergirlx]

thats alot of people...

[freswith]

Has anybody thought of asking the commercial traders who sell to AB/DLs?

There must be a threshold at which one places one's first order for AB/DL gear, and this could be used as a cut-off point - such people have put their money where their mouth is, and to some extent broken cover and prejudiced their anonymity. I remember the agony I went through before contacting Hazel with my first order.

I generally prefer to order through an specialised AB/DL site, because they are more likely to be discreet, so those operators have a strong interest in estimating the likely size of the market, and some hard data on which to go. The normal medical-supplies company is only interested in counting the incontinent.

Perhaps what we need is a "trade association" for the AB/DL industry that can pool the figures and produce a reasonable estimate. It would certainly be if use when approaching manufacturers with a proposition for a new product.