If GPS died tomorrow because of a solar flare, would the younger generations manage?
In general, I think our adaptation has significantly increased our ability to navigate at the minor cost of using either the map and compass or the new gps and advanced map data.
She says it's because kids don't interact with analogue clocks much anymore and Covid lockdowns meant that a lot of kids never learnt it in school either. So apparently there is now a generation of kids who are around 10 - 12 who have no idea how to read the time from an analogue clock.
On the other hand, they are unintuitive, less common with every passing year, and I'd rather my children get any recess than add "learn to use another antiquated tool" into the school curriculum. I do complicated math for a living, but nobody's offended that I didn't ever get good at using a slide rule.
Having taught math to children, analog clocks are a great way to learn and apply fractions. I suspect that children's inability to read analog clocks tracks pretty well with their abysmal math skills, like fractions.
So maybe we don't "add" analog clocks to the school curriculum, but we instead replace some nonsense with analog clocks and fractions.
Kids were bad at fractions even before digital clocks.
I can't remember the last time I saw someone with a mechanical watch other than as a fashion statement.
25 years ago, my household had mechanical alarm clocks, a mechanical clock on the oven, and multiple mechanical clocks on the walls of different rooms. Today, I think I might have a broken mechanical watch in my "you should probably fix these things" piles.
Where we are, analog time-telling is a required part of the (common core) curriculum. So kids would have to learn it in school, though not necessarily internalize it for long enough that it would stick in the long run.
Studies have shown that people just cannot read maps anymore due to dependence on GPS apps in their daily lives.
Most people I know do that.
I almost always look at a preview of the GPS route and try to understand the gist of the directions before I start driving. I build a narrative like "2 left turns, 1 right, then driving for quite awhile before taking an exit". It helps my mental model of the areas of town and how they connect.
I find it a lot easier as I have a mental picture of things.
What would probably happen is that people would start asking for / giving directions again; my impression is that maps have usually been secondary to this ad hoc social process of informal directions, and it would probably re-emerge.
Personally I rarely rely on turn-by-turn navigation but instead look at the map before hand and take a mental map of the directions to get there.
He also has no concept of road names. I was describing the route I would take when he needed to travel across the Seattle metro one time and any road other than I-5 was a complete unknown to him. It's a little scary to me.
Old marine maps had various landmarks on them, along with their height. This allowed you to get angle and distance, giving you the opportunity to calculate position with pen and paper even if you only had a single landmark in view.
You can't just pull over at a gas station in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and ask for directions. :-)
I learned to read maps when I was like 10; maybe younger. It's not that hard. I'm pretty sure they'll pick it up plenty fast enough when required.
The real problem with a map shortages and scalpers selling maps for fucktillion dollars.
It's not a skill that was lost to technology, it's a skill that most people never mastered even before we all had GPS systems in our pockets.