I agree with some of your points. I also lived through the 80’s and 90’s and can pick them out more acutely.

But they’re also long ago enough for the survivorship bias to kick in. There are highly specific aesthetics of the 80’s that are regurgitated back to us through media that says “THIS IS THE 80’S”. Think Stranger Things, where they just condensed an entire decade into head nods.

Meanwhile, no one is putting Bow Biters forward as iconic of the era, despite the fact that I remember seeing them everywhere when I was a kid. They are not a culturally recognized touch point the way that acid washed jeans and curly mullets are.

I think the average person has a very strong link to the aesthetics of their childhood, too. Someone born in 1995 is going to have a much sharper sense of what the “2000’s” looked and felt like than you or I.