People always act like the 1980's are ancient and antiquated, while the 1990's are still fresh and relevant, and I used to feel that way myself.

But recently I've been looking at photos and videos from the 90's, and listening to 90's music, and I honestly feel most of the 90's was not that different from the 80's. 90's pop music was still full of gated drums and cheesiness, and there wasn't nearly as much rap on the charts as you'd think. Bryan Adams and Michael Bolton were still considered the bees knees from 1990 to 1994, that's how bad it was.  Hell, even Britney's debut album is much more similar to a Debbie Gibson album than to any recent pop album I've heard.

Even as late as 1997, you still had tons of people with thick rimmed glasses, mullets, overalls, and turtlenecks!  The clothes people wore back in the Early to Mid 90's are much more similar to 70's and 80's clothing, than to clothing from after 2000.  The TV was more similar too, sitcoms still dominated  the decade.  TV didn't start to become raunchier until South Park came out in 1997.  The only reality shows from the 90's, I can remember are Blind Date, COPS and The Real World.

Most people would probably peg this video around 1990, but it's actually from 1997:

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People think that 1989 and before was pre-Internet times and that the 1990's to today is the "Internet era" (the Internet's actually existed since the 70's) and they're like day and night.  But, actually the Internet use was surprisingly low even in 1999 - only about 35-40% of Americans were online then (and far lower than that for almost every other country in the world), and fewer than 10 percent in 1994. Hardly anyone was online in 1993 aside from gamers and academics. If you were lucky, you might have had a college email address but that's about it.  Most people in western countries didn't even own computers, only a large minority did. The world was still a much bigger place than today and information traveled a lot more slowly even though "globalization" was really starting to kick into gear then.

Or what about this Nickelodeon Commercial Break:

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Most people would confuse these for being 1993 commercials when they are actually from 1999!

Cell phones were around throughout the 90's, but there wasn't really a "cell phone culture" until the early 2000's. My parents didn't have cell phones until 2002. Most people didn't feel a need to have one because there was a payphone on every corner, the sound quality was inferior, and they were expensive compared to landlines. I do remember many people owned "beepers".

Digital cameras were apparently around, but I don't remember them until the very late 90's and the quality was so terrible and the price so high that everyone still used film, even as late as the early 2000's. The only digital technology that pretty much everyone used was CD players.

People on this site always treat the 1990's as if it was the same as the 2000's and 2010's, but it was much different than those decades.  I'll admit the the Late 90's and Early 2000's were similar to the 90's, but the Mid 2000's through now are definitely not anything like the 90's .  The 90's were the last decade imo, to have a "vintage" feel to it.  Now movies from the 90's are starting to get those flicker specks older movies developed over time.  Turner Classic Movies even recently started showing movies from the 90's.  Things like grunge, Titanic, Jurassic Park, the Spice Girls, TRL era acts(Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Nsync, etc) Austin Powers, Beavis and Butt-Head, Clueless, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and other 90's pop culture icons certainly don't feel anything like today's pop culture.

The lack of the Cold War in the 90s is a pretty big friggin' difference from the 80s, geopolitically.  Also, 90s fashions, while dated today, weren't as overstated as those of the 80s.

Musically, the two decades are extremely different, aside from the early 90s being a continuation of late 1988-1989 culture.  Genres like grunge, gangsta rap, alternative, contemporary r&b, etc. were completely opposite of 80s hair rock, synth pop, hi-nrg, etc.  The decade was less flashy, less electronic, and generally more experimental (even though the 80s had a very memorable, distinct sound).  Honestly, I think the 90s were more like the 70s musically than the 80s, as there was a lot of acoustic rock in both periods (Eagles, Wings, and Fleetwood Mac for the 70s; Gin Blossoms, Hootie & the Blowfish, R.E.M., etc. for the 90s), and even contemporary 90s pop contains deep Motown influences, as opposed to just experimenting with technology.

In the world of cinema, too, the 90s were a bit more diverse, partially because CGI was much more standard in movies, but also because the decade produced a lot of serious and highly influential films, such as The Shawshank Redemption, Se7en, Forrest Gump, and Pulp Fiction, to name a few.  Also, the Disney Renaissance more or less heralded a completely new era for animation in general, and was followed by several fresh, popular TV series in the 90s like the Simpsons, Beavis & Butthead, the original Nicktoons, and the original Cartoon Cartoons.  These shows were more rebellious and broke the old, cookie cutter style that had defined Saturday morning cartoons in the past.  The 80s were not very different from the 60s in terms of animated features and programs, but the turn of the 90s and beyond very much changed all of that.

On a technical level, the 80s and 90s aren't extremely different, but a lot of subtle factors caused the two decades to have extremely different feng-shuis.

It depends on what part of the decades you're comparing. The early 80s still had a strong late 70s/disco vibe, which was completely different from the late 90s (or any part of the 90s for that matter). I sort of agree that the "look" of the 90s (up until 97 or so) wasn't that different from the latter part of the 80s; of course each decade had distinct sub-cultures like new wave, grunge, etc., but normal everyday people didn't look that different.

But like Infinity said, the pop culture of the two decades was quite different.  A big difference I've noticed is that 80s (and very early 90s) pop culture lacked irony for the most part. Look at Rick Astley or Vanilla Ice; they actually took themselves seriously. I think that's a big reason why the 80s became cheesey almost overnight, while the 90s have never really had much backlash.