ABDL Population Growth Survey

[Serendiapity]

It’s safe to say the world of ABDL is much wider than I imagine any of us could have thought when we realized we liked diapers. But as the Internet has continue to grow, both in scale and ubiquity of adoption, so too it seems our own online communities have grown and multiplied. (I wish I had some real statistics to prove this, but at the end of the day it’s just something I feel I’ve noticed.)

That brings me to the point of this thread: do you think that there are more ABDLs out there, whether online or not, than ever before? Is “ABDL population growth” real, and if so, what do you think may be causing it?

I realize that if there are more ABDLs than ever, that this trend may be caused by a myriad of possible factors, and there’s no way I can come up with a truly comprehensive poll. However, I’d love if people would fill it out and share their thoughts, as I think the topic itself is a fascinating one.

 

[ade]

You could also consider the 'confused' going through a phase (such as most of us have done in our youth) and the fetish/kink tourists, both of whom could skew a snapshot of ABDL-ness with their momentary appearances when influenced whatever else is going on in other realms of pop/internet culture.

 

[Waddler]

I have absolutely no data available to support my theory, but I think that visibility has made it possible for many people to (mainly secretly) give in to their desires. This is what happened to me too, as I am only aware of others having the same diaper fetish as me for a few years now.

Nice avatar btw Serendiapity, that's van Gogh if I'm not mistaken?

 

[Serendiapity]

You could also consider the 'confused' going through a phase (such as most of us have done in our youth) and the fetish/kink tourists, both of whom could skew a snapshot of ABDL-ness with their momentary appearances when influenced whatever else is going on in other realms of pop/internet culture.

That’s fair. I considered this sort of thing when making my poll (kind of a tangentially related issue to the “fake ABDLs” I keep hearing people complain about). I ultimately decided to not include built-in poll options for anything like this, for the simple reason that the poll is about “real” ABDLs specifically (i.e. people for whom this is a permanent thing, not just people who are experimenting with it out of curiosity or outside influence).

I have absolutely no data available to support my theory, but I think that visibility has made it possible for many people to (mainly secretly) give in to their desires. This is what happened to me too, as I am only aware of others having the same diaper fetish as me for a few years now.

Very valid point; I definitely feel that’s a part of it too.

Nice avatar btw Serendiapity, that's van Gogh if I'm not mistaken?

Thanks! Yes it is!

 

[Eclectic]

and the fetish/kink tourists

I think this is funny. Never been into fads and pop culture. Honestly, the reasons are probably all of the above and then some. All ABDL surveys suffer from biases, some more than others.

 

[SiiYaTii]

I think there is an overall trend towards general acceptance for groups that deviate from the heteronormative culture. That, I think, has led to to a societal acceptance of various kinks, which leads to the general population more inclined to explore themselves and their desires now that kinkshaming has become unacceptable.

 

[BobbiSueEllen]

I don't think we're ever gonna know at this rate. Too many variables well beyond our grasp & control.

 

[neophyte]

Awareness and social media.

Age Regression is replacing ABDL, and when people start looking into Age Regression they will discover that diapers are a part of that.

ABDL has a bad reputation and people under 25 tend to hate the term and think of it as a sexual bondage creepy thing.

 

[TabaCrate]

When in the70-80's I tried to find if I was alone on this planet, the information was near inexistant.
When in 1986, Internet appeared in europe, I discovered that some groups (usenet) existed.
When in the 90's, the WEB started to become public, the first pages appeared (more and more visible people)
When in the 2000, the first forums started, more and more people confessed
When in the 2010 the social network became a normal thing, by searching the words adult diapers, you could already find thousand of pictures of people wearing them.
Today, it's growing very quickly (my vision). How many shops, diapers type, clothes for us... There is a business for that that was very small 15 years ago.

Is the community growing? As far the visibility is concerned, dramatically yes! More people? Probably. When something appear to be normal for a lot of people, it might give you "ideas". You know it's strange but being also a niche market, why not try (and get hooked).

The visibility creates the opportunity...

 

[Nowididit]

We've seen a major boom in ABDL since the dawn of the internet. We were always out there prior but there has been a steady population growth since the late 90s. We have the old timers before the internet but the younger generation is out pacing us ever so steady. The internet is playing a major role in this because this is the age of the internet babies...the GenZers.
The internet has helped remove the stigma of self loathing and leaning towards more acceptance. I don't believe it has all that much to do with public identity because we only seem to identify to each other on social media sites. Not many outside ABDL interact with us on these sites.

 

[googlyeyes467]

Hey I think this is an interesting topic and I do feel that there may be greater acceptance of ABDL now than in the past leading to more visibility of the population.

That being said, your survey design is going to lead to unreliable answers. If you want to discuss survey design please let me know, I have resources. If you're doing this just for fun then sorry, the scientist in me is being a jerk

 

[Serendiapity]

Hey I think this is an interesting topic and I do feel that there may be greater acceptance of ABDL now than in the past leading to more visibility of the population.

That being said, your survey design is going to lead to unreliable answers. If you want to discuss survey design please let me know, I have resources. If you're doing this just for fun then sorry, the scientist in me is being a jerk

I appreciate the offer, but respectfully, I understand basic survey structure well— my options for constructing a poll on this site (as far as I could find) were rather limited, so I couldn’t do branching/categorization of questions, etc. to the extent I wanted to. Besides, this is just meant as an informal look into people’s thoughts on the matter; I’m not planning to submit the results for publication in a journal 😉

 

[LifesAB]

My answer would be:
Monkey see, monkey do.

 

[IamtheLorax]

I think the internet is a big factor here. ABDLs can not just share that information with people in person and hope to even be tolerated. The internet affords people a decent degree of anonymity, making it easier to share things that would be otherwise too embarrassing to talk about.

 

[vp39]

Since my interest is mainly in wearing plastic garments of all kinds, most of my thoughts are directed that way. One thing to think about is that we are unlikely to see an article about any of the best-known plastic pants vendors in Forbes or Fortune. So we lack one area of visibility there. But one of the vendors here in the US lists their inventory online: https://www.plastic-pants.com/inventory.html
Look down through that list and you'll see that it requires a considerable investment to have such a substantial inventory on hand. I would suspect that the other larger vendors keep similar inventories on hand. Also, I think that Gary Manufacturing has a listing somewhere on their website of the requirements they have for someone to buy wholesale from them, and those numbers were amazing to me when I saw them several years ago.
So there is no question in my mind that there is a considerable market for plastic pants, and that there's at least some correlation between the number of little soft packages of plastic pants in shipment at any given time and the number of us who post about them on websites like ADISC. My conclusion is that there are a lot of us, and that we probably are destined to gain some acceptance through sheer numbers.

 

[Lyric]

I have no data, reliable or otherwise about whether a greater percent of the population participates in ABDL activities now then before, however I firmly believe it has. I've been a DL for most of my 76 years it seems to me that year after year we see more products for us, more events, more opportunities to meet like minded folks, that it can't help but allow more folks to engage and become involved. Generally there seems to be much more social acceptance of a wider range of life styles, behaviors and encouragement to fully express our individuality.

 

[Oaktree]

Dr. Rhodas You're Not Broken speaks on this a little bit I believe. It mentioned there's likely a larger ABDL population than we believe and we are seeing it more due to people finding a way to learn more about, finding a support system around it, and finally better resources to help with accepting it. Not to mention there's been a push for the tolerance of alternative lifestyles, gender identity, and sexual preferences the past decade so that could be helping too.

 

[WarmAndSquishy]

I always tell people I’ve been an abdl most of my life, which is true. It started at around age 7 (age regression triggered by trauma) and obviously I didn’t know the name for it or what it was back then. It was a really isolating feeling, then I saw Riley’s episode of my strange addiction when I was around 12 years old. And BOOM it was like fireworks going off in my brain, there was a name for this and I wasn’t alone.

in terms of online things were a lot different back then too, remember TBDL? (yikes!) At the time abdl was really a community starting to just get their foothold in defining what they were, and I was so young that I didn’t wanna get involved. I lurked forums (I can’t tell you how many times teenage me took the sissykiss adult baby test 😂) and watched videos, but kept to myself.

Now as an adult I’m just starting to let myself get really into the community and allowing myself to not care if people around here take notice to me.

Well that’s my whole Ted talk about how I personally came into abdl, maybe there’s someone who can relate lol.

 

[DLBIG]

When in the70-80's I tried to find if I was alone on this planet, the information was near inexistant.
When in 1986, Internet appeared in europe, I discovered that some groups (usenet) existed.
When in the 90's, the WEB started to become public, the first pages appeared (more and more visible people)
When in the 2000, the first forums started, more and more people confessed
When in the 2010 the social network became a normal thing, by searching the words adult diapers, you could already find thousand of pictures of people wearing them.
Today, it's growing very quickly (my vision). How many shops, diapers type, clothes for us... There is a business for that that was very small 15 years ago.

Is the community growing? As far the visibility is concerned, dramatically yes! More people? Probably. When something appear to be normal for a lot of people, it might give you "ideas". You know it's strange but being also a niche market, why not try (and get hooked).

The visibility creates the opportunity...

It’s true to say that we see lots of ABDL product manufacturers, web site sellers and even more and more physical stores. We even have one close to Montreal! Luky me😉

All this would not exist if we were as marginal as we might think. Lots of $$$, it’s becoming an industry!

 

[DLBIG]

I have no data, reliable or otherwise about whether a greater percent of the population participates in ABDL activities now then before, however I firmly believe it has. I've been a DL for most of my 76 years it seems to me that year after year we see more products for us, more events, more opportunities to meet like minded folks, that it can't help but allow more folks to engage and become involved. Generally there seems to be much more social acceptance of a wider range of life styles, behaviors and encouragement to fully express our individuality.

You are right. Think of CapCon… thousands of people attending that convention every year😵‍💫😃