I think it matters not just whether one was alive for a decade, but how old one was and where one lived. I was growing up in the dairy-and-almond country of Central California all through the late 1980's, and have a clear memory of those times but from a child's perspective. Less pop culture, more... wood-paneled and carpetish furniture and decor, funny giant hairstyles on the adults, everything analog. Fraggle Rock was my favorite kids TV show, and I was obsessed with our taped VHS copy of the two direct-to-video Ewok Star Wars movies that no one seems to remember anymore. Despite the recent resurgence of the franchise, it's now very difficult to find a copy thereof, and even Disney appears to have disowned them. I adored the Ewoks though, and had a little stuffed Wicket throughout my childhood. I never saw the actual theater movie Return of the Jedi until years later.
I was well positioned to observe the slow changes wrought by the internet, as my parents were well-educated and keen to adopt new technologies but most people in my small town were not. I was already in college by the time high speed internet arrived in our little burg of Waterford. There was always high technology that existed in theory, even not so far away by literal miles, but functionally did not yet exist in most of rural America. In elementary school, later on toward the very tail end of the 80's, I was "on call" at the library, as one of the few kids who could sometimes fix the computer when it wasn't working. Yes, you heard right.
The computer, and they needed a third grader to trouble shoot the thing
It did have Oregon Trail on it, though. And later, the Encarta Encylopedia. My parents had a full set of actual encyclopedias at home though, inherited from my dad's parents and living on a dedicated bookshelf in the office. I could often be found on the office floor puring through the collection with vigor and interest. The original Simcity was released in 1989, and my mathemetician grandmother came by a bootleg copy that very year. It was so different from games that had come before, and seemed like a sign of things to come. It was. I started dreaming up the future existence of something like Google Maps while playing that game, and only had to wait sixteen years for it to appear for real.
The 90's were a more optimistic time, and I enjoyed them more. I don't always connect with the version of the 1980's one sees in nostalgic TV shows and the like, which seems much more fun and funky than anything I recall experiencing directly. CDs were another thing that are starting to really date my micro-generation; we adopted them late in my childhood, and they are all but extinct now. Social media was after my time, and I am curious how it will affect the generation that is growing up now. When I was young, social media consisted of the nightly news, and telephone calls to family members and friends. Yes, before there were cell phones, people actually called up their casual acquaintances on the kitchen telephone, which was attached to the wall by a curly cord.
My students often seem to assume I was there for the 70s, too. Must be the moustache? I'm getting older, but not
that older.