what was happening socially in the 1980's?

[Mike]

[Doesn’t Matter]

Skateboarding and punk rock

[M]

It depends on your age. In the early 1980s, disco was dying out but stubbornly hanging on. People had "Disco Sucks" parties where the music played was the new underground music coming out of the UK--new wave, alternative, post-punk and techno-pop. Powder cocaine was in, as was MDMA, which was still legal at the time. The War on Drugs hadn't started yet.
You have to remember that the world wasn't as connected as it is now. CNN had just started the 24 hour news cycle in 1980 Before that, you only got news once a day, not instantly, as-it-happens. Computers were only in college campuses and some high school classrooms. There were no cell phones. We had to buy our music in something called a "music store" which sold vinyl records, cassette tapes, and in 1985, CDs. There wasn't even a practical solution for making music portable until the Sony Walkman in 1980, and it used low-fidelity audiocassettes.
I graduated college in 1984 from a state university in the Midwest. I think we did the same as many college kids do today. We went to concerts, got stoned, played Untimate frisbee, hacky sack, and hung around with friends. We went to football games, had dates, and went to frat parties. The social activities are the same, it's just that organizing them has gotten a lot easier with all the new social media and mass communications.