What percentage of men wear thongs regularly by age group worldwide?

1. What the question actually demands and why it can’t be definitively answered

As asked, the query requires age‑stratified, global prevalence estimates of regular thong use among men, but the public reporting available is a patchwork of national surveys, brand or retailer polls, and market‑segment reports rather than a coordinated international epidemiological study; none of the provided sources supplies a worldwide age‑group breakdown, so any “global” percentage would be an extrapolation beyond the evidence ^[4][5].

2. What reliable, population‑level surveys show (United States and United Kingdom examples)

In the United States, a 2017 Statista summary of survey data reported that about one percent of men wore thongs several times a week and that older men (51+) had very low occasional use—four percent of men aged 51 and older reported wearing thongs at least occasionally, while 96 percent said they never did—indicating frequent wear is rare and occasional experimentation slightly higher among some groups ^[1]. By contrast, a 2016 YouGov analysis in the UK grouped bikinis, thongs and “French” underwear together and reported that those minimal styles were the favored choice for between 41–47 percent of men up to age 59, which suggests survey framing (grouping multiple minimal styles) and national taste differences can produce very different headline numbers ^[3].

3. Industry, brand and boutique surveys: enthusiasm, marketing and sampling bias

Recent retailer and brand surveys (e.g., Obviously Apparel, TBô, Princejock) claim rising interest—reports cite figures like roughly 1–4 percent of men wearing thongs regularly in some U.S. samples, or higher raw counts in small online polls (84 out of 824 respondents in one brand survey)—but these are often self‑selected panels or customers of brands that sell thongs, which inflates apparent prevalence and cannot be treated as representative of national male populations ^[2][6][7].

4. Why age patterns look contradictory across sources

Where age breakdowns exist, younger men are often reported as more open to minimal underwear styles in brand and market narratives, but academic or broad‑population surveys show much lower frequencies of regular thong wear; discrepancies arise from differing definitions (“regularly,” “occasionally,” or “favoured”), combined categories (bikinis + thongs), and sampling frames (consumer panels vs. national probability samples) ^[1][3][2].

5. Market data and what it can (and cannot) tell readers

Global market reports segment the men’s underwear market by age (e.g., 15–25, 26–35, etc.) and list thongs as a category, which shows commercial interest and supply, but such reports measure sales and product segmentation rather than the behavioral frequency of use by age in the general population—sales growth does not directly translate to percentage of men who wear thongs “regularly” across each age group worldwide ^[4][8].

6. Bottom line and guidance for interpretation

Based on available, cited sources, frequent regular thong wear among men appears to be a small minority—single digits in representative U.S. surveys (about 1% several times a week; 4% at least occasionally in older men for occasional use) and variable higher interest in some UK and brand polls depending on question wording—but there is no defensible global, age‑stratified percentage in the public record supplied here, and commercial or enthusiast sources likely overstate prevalence due to sampling bias; any firm worldwide age breakdown would require a standardized multinational survey ^[1][3][2].