1995...

I could be way off about this but here goes...
Not nearly as much has changed in 20 years as people like to think.
The look and feel of this movie in terms of things like clothes and dialogue including the slang look like it could be today. In terms of how young people act, I can't say one way or another, I think it depends on the upbringing of the specific youth. I'm 30 but still relatively young and none of my friends act like this. But I would think many young people (even in high school and certainly in college) do act like this and people who think it's more just reflecting 1995 are, hate to say it, quite naive. I was 20 in 2005 and saw this movie, and even though I wasn't one of them so many people in my community college did do the same things we see in the movie that I knew from their talking about it with each other. Flashback a few years prior when I was in high school even as a freshman many students including some of my friends though not to the extreme of the movie or the college students later on. Their parents were usually oblivious. This was all in a very upper class environment in Southern California, so it wasn't/isn't restricted to ghettos. Flashback much earlier to 1995 when this movie came out and I was just a wee 3rd grader, but I did notice a big cultural shift that year. Even though these actions were present since long before to some degree, things got much more -- well, with an anything goes mentality that I feel is still here to varying degrees just like then. In 1995 the just-gone early-'90s were heavily still like the '80s (think Saved By the Bell), then 1992 gave the grunge look that exploded in 1993 but the '80s stuff definitely hung around a couple years co-existing. Then 1995 came and gave fashions very similar to today's still, like we see here and in Clueless also from 1995, kind of reflecting people's general attitudes. So this movie wouldn't have been a product of, say, 1992 ior '93. I have a hard time believing that just because of Facebook teenagers don't do things and try to get away with them. This movie is disturbing but that's the point, it was a wake up call that I'm sorry to say still rings true.