Was life better in the late 90s?

I was a teenager in late 90's (I was 15 in 99) and I wanted to be a teenager in late 80's early 90's. Life's like that. But looking back, now I can see it was a magical time aswell. No smart phones etc, just tamagotchis!.
I remember renting this movie twice and watching it with my friends at my house in a saturday afternoon with popcorn and sodas.

I think you are just having nostalgia of childhood memories, for teenagers at the time the 90's sucked (99 was the year of the y2k scare) just like it does to you now this present time. In ten years you will cherish 2014.

Yes. But the 80s were better. I was in my 20s in the 90s and I had a hell of a time. Everything you stated is true. Maybe you should make the initiative to bring that back and screw social media -- it is over rated and you don't need it.

Well, the late '90s were better. So keep the spirit of the time alive within you and you will be better for it.

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If you are growing up in a relatively stable environment and your parents are reasonable folks and not abusive alcoholics or drug addicts, whenever you were young was better. Life is care-free when grown-ups are handing the hard stuff. I was born in the early 1950's. Looking back, life seemed much simpler then. We didn't wear helmets when riding bikes or roller skating, divorce was not that common, we didn't hear about kidnapping very often, it was actually safe to play outside until dark, (although they always warned us about talking to/taking candy from strangers) there were no drive by shootings. We didn't even HAVE cell phones or computers, I can remember when they FIRST CAME OUT w/ color TV. We used our imaginations to entertain ourselves. We actually TALKED to people, either in person or on the phone, and we wrote REAL LETTERS! Do you know how nice it is to get a letter from a friend and sit down to savor it w/ a cup of tea? Kids aren't even learning to write manuscript anymore.

However, the 50's were great ONLY if you were a kid in a stable home or a straight white male. For anyone else, FORGET IT. Gay? Black? Want to live a creative bohemian life as opposed to strangling yourself w/ a tie and sitting in a cubicle all day? Female but you don't want a husband or kids (even if you're straight)? Good luck w/ that. Women's work was teaching, nursing or secretarial, and that was IT. They didn't become engineers or doctors. And they usually only worked until they got married or started having babies (There were always exceptions of course, this was the norm.)

On the flip side, we were in the depths of the Cold War, and had drills where we were supposed to hide under our school desks if a nuclear bomb went off, like THAT'S going to protect you! And that horrible Joseph McCarthy and HUAC were destroying people's lives.

So the fifties weren't a total bed of roses either. I see them as being repressive, but I did have that care-free, Main St, USA upbringing. My parents worked very hard to give us a stable life. My dad held 2 jobs for many years (one full-time and one part-time) and still managed to keep the house up and mow the lawn so we had a place to play. We weren't rich, but we always had a clean, warm home, food on the table, and clean clothes that were appropriate for the season, even if I wasn't dressed in the height of style that I would have liked. They took us to church so we had a good moral base. And we were all encouraged to go to college and we all went.

One summer, every evening after dinner, all the neighborhood kids would gather in the mowed field behind one yard and we played softball until dark. I don't remember it being discussed it just happened, EVERY evening ALL summer long. Just that one summer. But it was wonderful.

Unless you have a really messed up childhood, whenever you were young was best.

That's my sociology lecture for the day, sorry for the diatribe.

The 1990s and the year 2000 were a magical time. Incredible music (Nirvana, Foo Fighters Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, TLC, Britney, Christina, Aerosmith, STP, etc.), the movies were amazing, The President was more consistent on his decisions, the economy was doing superb and even the scandals in Hollywood and Government were more memorable and in better taste.

Now it's a disastrous mess. The movies are CGI infested garbage with bland characters and horrendous dialogue, the music, mostly Hip Hop and Pop, is tragically dreadful (Bieber, Cyrus, Minaj,One Direction, etc.), the economy has been flushed down the toilet, we've got pointless and idiotic apps like Twitter that makes people feel "special" or "Popular", our President and his wife are Attention seeking dimwits who don't have the slightest clue what they are doing, teenagers are disrespectful, foul mouthed punks and the government is now filled with ignorant tools.

The 1990s and 2000 were a time of pure fun, entertainment and safety. Now, it's become a hellhole of douchebags ruining the world.

It was no more magical then today. Life was life. Just like life was life 5,000 years ago. People went to school, went to work, loved each other, hated each other, learned some stuff and then died and was put in the ground. NO DIFFERENT THEN TODAY.

People like to retcon the past with nostalgia as they grow older and make it out like life was super easy and simple. This is a bunch of nonsense. I was not a late 90s teenager, I was in high school in then early 1990s, I graduated high school in 1993. Most of my growing up was in the 80s, but I still felt connected to the youth culture through the late 90s. I remember watching this movie when I was 23 with my friend and his younger sister and her friends, who were still high school seniors in 1999. I think this was one of the last high school movies I actually went to the theater to see, this and American Pie. Somewhere in the early 2000s I turned 25 and grew up to be an adult and finally left this teeny bopper stuff behind. So I have a nostalgia for the entire 90s in one way, but the decade was no more magical then any other decade.

But I understand why you feel this way. I think as a teenager in the early 90s I felt like the early 80s were a more magical time, when in reality I know it wasn't. Life is life, people just love to retcon the past and rose tint everything. Hell the 2000s are already being retconned as being more simpler and better times. Plus you have to understand your sense of time is warped, since you are only like 17 or 18. 10-15 years ago to you must feel like an eternity ago, while to those of us over 25, it feels like what perhaps 5-7 years ago feels like to you. 1999 really was not that long ago, it just feels like it to you since you're still a kid. I mean, how old is the earth, like 4.5 billion years old? In the grand scheme of the cosmos, nothing in the 20th century is all that old. Sobering reality I know.

The 80's are my favorite decade but the 90's where great too. I would say that life was better then: the pre-9/11 world wasn't as crazy as it is right now and technology wasn't as dominant. The music was better too and especially in the late 90's the movies where great! When I look at my ratings at IMDB there seems to be an upward spike in the late 90's and early 2000's. TV was worse though: tv drama is a lot better now.