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Did people smoke marijuana, what other drugs were popular then, was sex and drinking popular with teens then? Did they have cliques like there were today? Were the girls who were slutty like now? How did people dress and what music was popular? What are similarities and differences of a high school in the 1990s and 2010s besides cell phones and did schools in the early-mid 90s have computers? Any other information would be greatly appreciated.
Did people smoke marijuana, what other drugs were popular then, was sex and drinking popular with teens then? Did they have cliques like there were today? Were the girls who were slutty like now? How did people dress and what music was popular? What are similarities and differences of a high school in the 1990s and 2010s besides cell phones and did schools in the early-mid 90s have computers? Any other information would be greatly appreciated.
No cell phones and the internet was just started. It was really, really slow.
Everything else was probably the same.
The one thing I remember from the 90s that might be different today is that it was really popular for white teenagers to act like they were black.
I haven't seen too much of that in teens today, but then again, I'm not around them too much.
No cell phones and the internet was just started. It was really, really slow.
Everything else was probably the same.
The one thing I remember from the 90s that might be different today is that it was really popular for white teenagers to act like they were black.
I haven't seen too much of that in teens today, but then again, I'm not around them too much.
Still pretty common, but nowadays some Asian kids are joining in too.
A lot will also depend on your location, socio-economic bracket, etc
I really don't think schools have changed all that drastically as far as kids for a long time
Yes - students did smoke, there were other drugs - prescriptions probably not as prevelant, but various forms of speed, ecstacy, opiates and the ever present alcohol
There were kids who had sex, kids who made horrible decisions, tons of cliques
The internet was really just coming on - mainly dialup for the middle part of the decade, AOL, usenet groups, chat rooms, etc .......... it was used for porn, harassing classmates, gossip and all that other fun stuff .... just a lot slower
You'd be more apt to have students who wanted to make mix tapes then burn discs as this was pre-mp3
Really no cell phones, although some had pagers
There were also tons of kids that did well in school, didn't do drugs, didn't care about cliques and basically just went about their business and a ton of kids inbetween the two extremes
Music was varied - the tail end of the decade had the new pop emergence with brittney spears, christina aguilera .... also the shift in rap/hip-hop to the "money, hoes & clothes" attitude with people like puffy dancing with shiny suits on in the mid part of the decade
Grunge came on and killed the hair metal scene and opened up the door for darker music, but relatively quickly flamed out leaving rock bands like stone temple pilots, nine inch nails, smashing pumpkins, etc to become popular
Dress was all over the place as well - really nothing identifiable such as "80s hair" - piercings became more common, polo shirts became expensive with Tiger Woods ..... the fashion will shift depending on what part of the decade you were looking at ....... if you got lucky you may even find some pinch rolled jeans and BUM Equipment or flannel shirts and thrift store finds being trendy
I graduated in 1987. No cell phone. Our school had a pay phone at the benches where we waited for the bus. Most common illegal drugs were pot and alcohol (illegal for under 21). Most in my school stayed away from extasy, cocaine, crack, meth, and heroin. We were allowed to bring our own medication to school without having to hand it over to the nurse. I had BC Powder, cold medication, & cough drops. We weren't allowed to use a calculator except for advance college prep math classes. No electronic devices like smart phones, PDA, pads, laptops, nor digital cameras. We had computers in school, but they could not connect to an Internet. My class did not include ANY graduating with their baby watching them graduate. The best part about school back then is guys wore pants that fit properly and stayed up at their waist, instead of hanging down their backside. But our elementary and middle school years included "duck and cover" drills in case of nuclear war. My freshman year of high school had job opening announcements because the Louisiana oilfield companies were hiring and paying big bucks. Following year, not even half as much job announcements. By my junior year, the job announcements stopped and the oil field job market dried up. Being "on tha welfare" was an insult and part of an Eddie Murphy joke. Being on the "free lunch" program was a source of shame. Our food was cooked inside the school instead of at a central location and brought to the schools. Only one soda vending machine located in a back room for teachers and other school faculty. Students drank milk, chocolate milk, or water. Oh, one reason for the lack of pregnant students is AIDS was a death sentence and only a condom could help prevent getting AIDS. We were scared to death of AIDS.
There was big divide between the first half and second half of the decade, especially with the Internet. Most of the people on the Internet during the first few years of the 90s were people in college and some government employees, and there wasn't any real commercial activity on the Internet. A lot of people didn't have internet at home, although people in bigger cities would be more likely to have it. And yes, everything was dialup. There was an idea that the internet should only be for education and shouldn't have any kind of business involved in it. That died out as the Internet got more popular. The Web was really primitive and a lot of stuff was just text. Most of the time you had to type commands to be able to do a lot of things on the Internet that people just do with a mouse now.
A lot of people did not have computers in their homes. Usually the only ones who did were "computer nerd" people who were actually into programming. I think by then most schools did have computers, but not all of them had the internet. What was really common would be a computer class where they'd try to teach you some kind of basic programming, but most of the time the kids would just want to play games.
The later part of the decade the Internet was closer to how it is now. I remember the first time I saw a commercial website was around 1995-1996. This was also the time when you started seeing more people with cell phones, but they were still kind of a novelty.
The drugs that were popular depended on where you lived, but I think the three main ones were pot, Ecstasy, and I guess heroin. A lot of stuff depended on where you lived--at my high school students who were 18 were allowed to smoke if they stayed on one part of the school grounds. But I lived in a rural area and a lot of stuff was allowed that might not have been in other places back then. We always usually had one or two girls who would get pregnant and have to drop out or take correspondence classes [what would be distance learning today.] I guess these days a lot of schools would just let them be pregnant and attend classes.
Rap music was just starting to get mainstream. Music was kind of all over the place, you had a lot of different types of music all being popular at the same time. A lot of stuff that would have been considered underground or non-commercial back in the 80s was suddenly getting on the radio.
One thing people were really upset about were cigarette advertisements being in magazines, having characters like Joe Camel, etc. It's not really that much different than today, people were just upset about different things.
I don't know if people dressed all that differently than now. I guess you had some things that were popular for a while and then went away, but even then not everyone wore it.
Did people smoke marijuana, what other drugs were popular then, was sex and drinking popular with teens then? Did they have cliques like there were today? Were the girls who were slutty like now? How did people dress and what music was popular? What are similarities and differences of a high school in the 1990s and 2010s besides cell phones and did schools in the early-mid 90s have computers? Any other information would be greatly appreciated.
The internet was the big thing in the 90s. We has dialup in the early 90s and got cable modem high speed internet (high speed at the time) in 1996. There was a clear divide between parents who adopted technology and those who did not. Half the children had pagers, cell phones and high speed internet while the other half didn't.
Marijuana - Yes.
Other drugs - not so popular, but I'm sure some did.
Sex - ofcourse.
Drinking -Yes.
Cliques - In middle school a bit... by the time HS came around, everyone was friends
Sluttiness - Yes.
Dress - like music
Music - like clothing
Cell phones - mid-late 90s. Early 90s - pagers
Computers - since the 80s
The internet was the big thing in the 90s. We has dialup in the early 90s and got cable modem high speed internet (high speed at the time) in 1996. There was a clear divide between parents who adopted technology and those who did not. Half the children had pagers, cell phones and high speed internet while the other half didn't.
Marijuana - Yes.
Other drugs - not so popular, but I'm sure some did.
Sex - ofcourse.
Drinking -Yes.
Cliques - In middle school a bit... by the time HS came around, everyone was friends
Sluttiness - Yes.
Dress - like music
Music - like clothing Cell phones - mid-late 90s. Early 90s - pagers
Computers - since the 80s
That must have been in a high income area. My oldest sister graduated in the mid 90s and hardly anyone had a computer. No one we knew had Internet or a cell phone. She was the only person we knew who had a pager. Even in the late 90s, when I finished junior high, hardly anyone where I lived had Internet. Computers were becoming more common, though, but no one still had cell phones. Where I lived, cell phones were still often thought of as something that Zack Morris and rich people had. They weren't common until the mid 2000s.
Music definitely varies. Something that was popular where my sister went to high school, but in hardly any other county in the U.S., in the mid 90s was third-wave ska.
I started H.S. in fall 99. Cell phones weren't mainstream anywhere. By the time I graduated in 03, I'd say 25% of my senior class had them. I lived in Chicago.
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