I was born in 1998 so I just know the 90s from what I hear. I already know the obvious stuff like less tech, Internet was new, etc. I’m trying to understand what the “feeling” of the 90s was like. Like what was the vibe of it, how did people see the world? I’m mostly talking about the feeling of it in the United States. From what I understand, things were stable so people felt kinda bored. Is this true? Idk this is just what I’ve read.

I was born in 1998 so I just know the 90s from what I hear. I already know the obvious stuff like less tech, Internet was new, etc. I’m trying to understand what the “feeling” of the 90s was like. Like what was the vibe of it, how did people see the world? I’m mostly talking about the feeling of it in the United States. From what I understand, things were stable so people felt kinda bored. Is this true? Idk this is just what I’ve read.


If this board is anything to go by you won't get the same answer each time. The 1990s felt different depending on your age, economic status, political views, nation of birth, and personal interests. The common stuff that you normally hear are the very generalized stuff.

My post doesn't answer much, but I'm not sure if a short post can clearly describe an entire decade and all its aspects in detail. All I can recommend is trying to look into each aspect and research them through google.

I experienced all of the 90's as an adult.  That said, it was a pretty awesome and fun decade for me overall, but not so much "because" it was the 90's, but more due to my stage of life.  My entire 30-something decade.  I worked hard, played hard, and related hard.  Plus I got married.

That said, here's some distinctives about the decade of the 90's.  One, as a "late Boomer" I was pretty disenfranchised with pop culture overall, as compared to previous decades (this has been discussed before).  On the other hand, I had a relational world that was amazing.  Plenty face time with good friends - we'd get together plenty to go eat, eat in, have a party, enjoy sports (like Super Bowl), vacations together, etc.  The time seemed more intensely relational than times since, in part as there was no competition from smart phones (didn't exist) or computers (no competition to a great extent, not yet).  With things in the world being relatively peaceful (as compared to before/since), there was a lot more focus on what was going on at home.  Of course there were problems - gangs had gotten bad again, there were pockets of economic despair, even worse yet was signs that the moral fabric we'd grown accustomed to in families was eroding in kids as in severely rebellious kids, the first mass school shootings, kids smoking, drinking, doing drugs and getting destructive piercings at high rates, kids "disappearing" into their video games, things like that.  This to the point many of us worried about what these kids would become.  Other than that, it was a pretty good time to be alive.  Of course as Y2K approached, everyone got a little worried about that...

This may not be what you're looking for, but what I liked about the 90s is that it wasn't the 80s. I loved the culture of the 60s and 70s, but I hated how the pendulum swung in the 80s to shallowness and greed and meaninglessness. And the music! DREADFUL! I know there are some people here who sing the praises of the 80s from a secondhand point of view, but, tellingly, they weren't actually alive yet. So take it from one who was there. When the 90s came it seemed like things had gotten a bit "earthy" again. Less "flighty" than the 80s, you might say. Even though I cannot call myself a big fan of grunge, at least it was rock and roll again and we were finally rid of all that 80s synth "new wave" junk. Little did I know that Kurt Cobain and the gang were the last hurrah of rock and roll. I simply assumed, as did many, that "rock and roll is here to stay". I shudder now at my naivety.

I was a child in the '90s, and it was a very good time to be a kid. We were in the midst of the Disney Renaissance when we would drag our parents out to the movies to see every new release and collect every McDonald's Happy Meal toy based on their movies. It was a golden age of cartoons with the likes of Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon and One Saturday Morning. I remember begging my parents to get cable so I could watch Cartoon Network at home.

As much as the '90s kids annoy me, I can understand why they have so much nostalgia for that era.

The 1990s were my teen years. So it was about the latest trends and fads, going to school, listening to the top 40 with friends. Playing video games, recording music videos. Friday night outings with family.

No social media, no smartphones, no internet(until 1996).

I miss that world. Good memories.  :)

I was a kid in the late 1990s. Local multiplayer games were all the rage then especially in 1999.

The 1990s were my teen years. So it was about the latest trends and fads, going to school, listening to the top 40 with friends. Playing video games, recording music videos. Friday night outings with family.

No social media, no smartphones, no internet(until 1996).

I miss that world. Good memories.  :)


I remember my first experience with computers. I was in preschool and I was particularly fond of a Sesame Street computer game where I learned how to count with Count von Count.  :D

My first memories of the Internet are from when my aunt next door got Internet access around the late '90s. I would sit down with her and she'd show me things like the Disney website advertising the movie Tarzan. Then when she wasn't in the room, her teenage son, being a dumbass, "accidentally" accessed a pornographic website while I was sitting right next to him.  :P

I felt like the 90s were kind of dark. People weren't as good to kids then as they are now, there was a lot more violence and crime, people were apathetic and cynical, the cartoons were weird and dark, and a lot of people were struggling economically around the world as countries dismantled their welfare systems.

As an adult it probably would have been cool though, especially if you made it big in tech or something. And there are a lot of things I am nostalgic about, like the sitcoms (Full House, Fresh Prince, Saved by the Bell, Family Matters, etc) and the music from the late 90s.

I only liked the early 90s which felt like a carryover of the late 80s.  Very upbeat.  The pop was light and easy, there was New Jack Swing and Eurodance, even country music was exploding into something new and exciting practically overnight.  There were still plenty of family oriented sitcoms leftover from the 80s.  There were kids shows and things like Seinfeld which I think changed the format of TV forever, but it wasn't prevalent yet.

To me, once grunge became popular, things went down the tubes.  Things got dark.  Carelessness, slacking, and depression seemed to be the in-thing.  True around 1997 new things started to emerge, but to me it was still a hint of dark no matter what.  Post grunge was everywhere.  Country music just kept trucking along the same as the early 90s, so that's what I primarily listened to through most of the decade.

Though it started with a few shows in the 80s or earlier, the 90s seemed to be the epitome of the trashy tabloid talk shows.  And publicizing scandals with Court TV and similar was very big.  OJ Simpson, Monica Lewinsky, Anita Hill, Buttafuoco, Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan, etc.  I think MTV's "The Real World" from the mid 90s was the big start of the reality show craze.  MTV was becoming less and less built of music.

The internet was just coming of age in the mid 90s and was very primitive and not real time interactive like it is now.  I preferred it that way actually but it was still that way in the early 2000s.  Computers were what, say a couple hundred MHZ processing speed at the most.  Computers were just starting to use CDROM drives but floppy discs were still everywhere.  Cell phones were few and far between too, and there was no such thing as a smartphone.  There were no tablets or wifi.  Most people were transitioning over to CDs from cassettes, though you could still get both easily at least in the early 90s.  DVDs were just coming out in the mid 90s, so VHS pretty much ruled all through the 90s.  Digital cameras were out but the pictures were so horrible due to technology limitations it wasn't even worth it.  Where the 80s seemed like a time of growing and changing technology for the upper class, the 90s seemed like more of a time of growing and changing technology for the average person.  Which continued into the 2000s.

People's perspective on the 90s depends on age. It you were born in 80s or 70s you might've enjoyed more of the pop culture aspect where as of you were 60s born or before you would enjoy the 90s from a more personal perspective more

I loved the 90s and wish I could've experienced it at an older age. The  best thing I can say is watch aot of 90s TV to get an idea. The time waz simple, yet advancing. I think it was the pinnacle of most technology.

Teal and purple almost everywhere!
On cars, mugs, tracksuits (vs the navy and red ones of the 70s and early 80s), shorts, shirts, cafees, mall interiors etc.
I also prefer the vibes of the early 90s and perhaps even 1993-1994. 1995-6 was a big shift, and musically 1997-9 even more so. The late 90s were more somber ith worse imo music. Tearin' Up My Heart was a great jem, but most of the songs of 1997-1999 were meh.

Teal and purple almost everywhere!


LOL, my '98 wedding colors were teal and peach!  Very pretty color combo - also very 90's.  ;)

The colors were black, orange, teal, purple, red, and blue.

Video game consoles were everything to children. There was the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis (very 90s system), and PlayStation. Handheld games were taking off, also. When Gameboy, Sega Game Gear, and the Atari Lynx were not around, we picked up Tiger Electronics handheld games (these are coming back).

Skateboarding became cooler than surfing.

We were trying to hang on to the new culture from the 1980s, while being impressed by the new culture from the 90s. The Simpsons, Super Soakers, JNCO jeans, and Animaniacs all came out of the 90s.

The 90s were a laid back time to live in.

I remember surf/beach/color splash/lightning themed graphics on the sides of cars (started in 1985-6 and went out of style circa 1996). I think car graphics were big in the 70s in the USA so lots of trends were a late 80s/90s take on the 70s ones.

Some looked like Miami Vice (teal, green or purple were often used on the sides of cars). In general all kinds of teals and purples were popular:
https://images.app.goo.gl/GaZAi2Wp3QEQqieH7

Baywatch and Pamela became huge (I wonder if the female swimsuits were influenced by the Farrah poster of the 70s?).