Your answers will vary by user and location. I can only speak from a US perspective, California specifically, and growing up in the 80s and 90s.

Our counter-cultures weren't anywhere near as politicized then. The most "political" thing any of us engaged in was pop/celebrity expression. For example, musicians were using their art to try to help wake us up to the real world and other cultural experiences, so standing by and for those musicians was our rebellion. The rise of rap and RnB, and grunge, and lets not forget Rage Against The Machine. There's politics around what they were speaking of, certainly, but Rage was the only overtly political band that was embraced. There was an underbelly of punk on the west coast, but not as well-known as other areas in the world. We also had goth and rave culture becoming more public.

Gay men (and lesbians) went through the AIDS crisis while I was growing up, and that definitely had political and public influence. But as a tween and teen, it didn't have influence over ME, it was adults experiencing that. The LA Riots occurred and that shook things up, but again, it wasn't influencing ME. We had the Gulf War, no influence. We had a president cheat on his wife with an intern, no influence. During all of this, some celebrities were speaking out about capitalism and the overreach of corporations, or religious organizations and coverups of crime, but even that had no influence on me.

Politics and regular everyday life were separate. I was a poor working-class kid just trying to make money to help keep a roof over our heads, I had no way to relate since none of these things that were making headlines trickled down to teenagers or even my early 20s life. Our counter-cultures were "you can't tell me what to do, I'm going to look and act how I want!" ... typical young rebellion where you think you've found an identity, but you eventually grow out of it and move on to the next one.

The difference is that we didn't have laws being changed to support our teenage whims. We didn't have worldwide financial and political backing for us to stay locked into that whim.

When I got my nose pierced by a random shop at 15, there weren't protesters outside fighting for or against my "human right" to do so. When I convinced adults to buy me cigarettes when I was 12, the media and activists didn't praise me for "being my true self". Schools weren't allowing teachers to have curriculum or discussion about my "self-identity", and no one was championing for that (at least until a little bit in high school).

The internet really changed things. It's given a platform to everyone who has a voice, whether they should be listened to or not. It's brought about peer pressure in a totally different way, what's now called "cancel culture". And cancel culture now extends to adults too. It's like society has regressed to the age of 13, and I'm fucking baffled about how we're ever going to get beyond it.