Sounds right to me. I graduated high school in 1997. Practically all my friends had cell phones by 1996-1997. We would often wait to talk at night using the “anytime” minutes. Txting wasnt really a thing yet. I didn’t go to a rich high school either. I’d say it was probably upper, lower class actually. I still remember my 800mhz analog Motorola StarTac. Man, those were the shit!
I think the disbelievers here are thinking of cell phones as they are now and have been for maybe the last decade - an “essential” for pretty much every adult and more-so for the teen (and increasingly, preteen) markets.
There may have been 70M cell phones in the US around 1997-8 (which was when I also got my first one, a gift) but they were largely in the hands of mobile/traveling business people and just starting to filter into general family (as in one-per-) use.
I think that it was around 93 when, for the first time, I asked someone on my private phone to “Hold on please, my other phone is ringing…”
I didn’t get a mobile phone until 2002, and even then I was something of an “early adopter” among my peer group (college students). I would guess that less than one third of college students had cellphones in 2000.
Mobile phones actually caught on among the chattering classes earlier in the UK than in the US. I think it’s because of the ridiculously high landline calling rates. I remember visiting the UK in 1998 and seeing dozens of TV ads mentioning text messaging (and showing teenagers messaging each other). Texting was still very much an optional extra in US cellular contracts at that time.
In 1998* I got a cellphone because I just bought a car and wanted to be able to call for roadside assistance, etc. in a break-down situation. IOW, I thought of it primarily as a carphone that I could put in my pocket. As I recall, the allowance of minutes that came with my basic plan was not so generous to use them casually or willy-nilly but also not so spartan that the phone was a “use only in emergencies” thing. Several cellphones later, I still have the same phone number and the same car.
*when I was 26, so not a teenager on one hand nor a jet-setting businessman on the other. Very middle class, and living in the Chicago suburbs, for those trying to make demographic comparisons.
Don’t know about teens, but there wasn’t much of a texting culture back then because texting on a '90s cellphone was a pain in the ass. 
2-2-2: C, 7-7: R, 3-3: E, 7-7-7: S, etc. ad nauseam.
In 1997 and 1998 loads of my friends in Ireland had them, by the time I was in college in 2000 I was the only person in my peer group that didn’t own one yet. I didn’t buy get one until 2003, some stubborn notion I had which I have since forgotten.
I have a hard time believing it. I moved to Montana in '99, and in my early years there, at a large gathering of people (specifically, middle-class technophiles), you still had to ask “does anyone here have a cell phone?”, instead of “Hey, can I borrow your cell phone?” to the first person you saw. In particular, I remember one time at the department fall party (which always had at least fifty people attending) where someone needed a phone for some reason and there were exactly two people present who had one.
Now, to me, that makes the statistic sound even less plausible, not more. A departmental policy like that is a recognition of the fact that cell phones are quite scarce. Compare to today, where almost no company would bother with company cell phones, because they’d just assume that everyone has one anyway.
One thing I’d add is that from my experience, cell phones did not trickle down to teenagers. With the exception of certain professionals and businessmen, teenagers had cell phones well before they became common with adults. That might be affecting some people’s views. I didn’t know any adults with a cell phone in 1998, but just about everyone in my high school had them.
I’d bet pretty strongly on your experience being… unusual. Wealthy community or school, special circumstances (like a lot of self-driving teens in a rural location), etc.
We had three teens at the time, were/are fairly “techy,” money was not a controlling issue, and none got a cell phone until they were earning enough to pay for it, around 18. Two went to very upscale private schools and even there, cell phownage was about 25%, rising to 90% or more by 2001 or so.
“Handys” aka Mobiles/Cellphones were pretty common by '98 in Germany
Having a car in high school was pretty common too. It wasn’t a rich high school by any means, though. Kids would drive $500 cars, as long as it ran. This was Tampa, FL, though, not the countryside. I would think that rural teens would be less likely to have cell phones.
What grade were they in? Was it common for high school kids in those upscale schools to have jobs? Maybe that has something to do with it. Seeing as how nobody in my school came from wealthy families, everyone had a job. Having a job meant you could spend money on whatever you wanted. And having a phone was the “in” thing.
Same in France. I entered college in September 1998 and most students had a cell phone. One year before that, it was still a luxury or professional item.
I believe it was more a case of the beginning of the helicopter parent movement, where the parents want to make sure that their baaaaaabies can always get into contact if there’s trouble. Potentially, it started with younger kids before high schoolers, even. But I’d put it on yuppies more than the wealthy or rural families.
But it may well have been something that would hit a single school and spread within it. But minus that seedling child, the school would stay clear for a while. I didn’t see the cellphone movement, I just remember hearing the joke just as I was graduating. So certainly it was a thing in some places.
The number seems right to me. I had one in 1998, as did everyone in my family and most of my friends and none of us were rich. I was 21 and working for peanuts and, IIRC, my bill was about $60 per month and had free nights and weekends. My phone was similar to this (which was the first search hit for “1998 cellphone”). I think I still have it in a drawer somewhere.
My experience is the opposite, but maybe in certain schools they caught on as a “fad”. Still would be a minority though, like kids with their own computer in the 80s.
When I was in high school, possession of a cell phone was punishable by a 5 day suspension. That was in 96-97 in the Mid Atlantic US.
My mom, who worked for a phone company, had one if the big old Motorolas that stayed in the car for emergencies. It was $9.99/mo but ever single minute was charged (30 cents per minute, IIRC).
I got my first phone in 1999. I knew people who worked at a store and all got phones. So I got a phone, too. My first phone was in my GF’s name because I didn’t think I would qualify. In 2000 I got phones in my own name, and I have had 4-7 cell phones in my name at all times since then.
I never had a pager, but most of my friends had them around 1996-1999 and later “2 ways.”