Graduated in 1990. Urban (read: Black/Latino/poor, in the city) school. Listen, all the kids in my school that had pagers were either dealers, players, or had mad stacks. (Translation: involved in drug dealing, were very socially/sexually active, or had money as a result of any or none of these activities.) These were the “need to have a pager” people. They had the cool multicolored/translucent pagers. If said kid had more than one pager, they were definitely selling drugs or banging two or three chicks at the same time. All of these kids were Black and Latino. Maybe a handful of White kids were in this category.
Then you had the wannabes, who pestered mom or dad or worked a paper route to have a pager… for no good reason at all. Your friends could call you (usually if you needed a ride). Also, you could call your parents if you missed the bus or something. They had the generic black pagers. This group was pretty mixed racially and a lot of White girls had pagers from their parents.
My friend Reggie was kind of like the Black D-Day from Animal House of my high school. Said like three words a day, people thought he was cool, but he was very mysterious. Reggie had shop class, and if you asked him nicely, he’d carve you a fake pager. You could paint it black and stick a red sticker on it, and to the uninitiated from a distance, it looked like you had a pager. Seriously. Fake pagers were a statement… you could attach them to the loops of your overalls and look really cool.
Two years later in college I wore a pager when I was an RA on duty. This was my life until graduation and I learned to hate the buggers. 
At least with cell phones, someone could tell you that there was a guy threatening to spray his roomie with pepper spray, instead of walking in on that shit. 