Why should people have to understand URLs? Do most people understand how the engine of a car works? No. They just want to get from A to B. Most people don't care.

Hiding query parameters hides yet another thing that's mostly unreadable anyway.

Comparing this to "young people don't understand words" is quite silly. Printed words are important. The message is important. And in fact, language is constantly being simplified, and has been simplified throughout history. Just like the address bar in Opera is now simplified.