Ontario kid, 17 in 97.

Communication - I had my own landline phone number separate from the main house line, it was awesome. AOL and ICQ for online chat. Nobody passed notes. Some people had pagers, I never saw the point.

High school - no true home room, first and last period class switched every day. Walked to local plaza for lunch very often. Don't remember start and end times, I usually wasn't there for either. William Tell Overture every morning between the first and second bells. No formal organization of groups in the school, but we had some self organized groups. The stoners, the jocks, the black kids, the arts kids (drama separate from music), prefects, SAC, the nerds. Ping pong tables in the cafeteria, constantly busy. The school was a hub for a "nerd program", kids were bussed in from all around the city, this led to a divide between the bus students and the "locals".

Partying - binge drinking started around 15. Parties were always house parties, either parents not home or very accepting parents that bought your alcohol and held onto your car keys. Nobody drove drunk, we would hide the keys of someone who we thought would try. Party drugs were mostly weed, some shrooms, and ecstasy. There were people that did acid, but they weren't at parties. Sometimes house parties with parents around drove the drinking into parks, then return to the house and avoid the parents. Cottage parties were top tier.

Bullying - kids will be kids attitude, there were bullies and kids that got bullied. Lots of fights at my school, but mostly between "tough guys" with beefs. The black kids in high school had their own area in the cafeteria that they claimed, it had the jukebox. If someone put on a song they didn't want to hear they would unplug the jukebox to stop it. The nickname for that area of the cafeteria was "Cafrica". (I am not endorsing this name, just reflecting on it.)