I don’t know if this is true for older generations, but for myself and many of my zoomer and millennial friends barely know street names making giving or receiving directions much harder.
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.
I always try to build a mental map of whatever area I'm traveling to. Even if only the major highways and arterials. My GenZ son is fully reliant on GPS to go anywhere he hasn't been at least three times before. While I'm sure he could build a mental map if he needed to, it's not something he does because he's never had to.
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.
That's interesting. Are you saying many people you know don't usually check street signs against the name of the streets the GPS directs users to? I know that's my reflex when I have readable street signs, but I guess I have no idea what portion of people rely on that vs the "feel" of how close the turn is from the visual representation on-screen (which I use sometimes too, but don't like relying on since it often lags a bit) or other cues.
Not quite, but maybe, I don’t talk to my friends about how they interact with gps directions. I’m saying that when giving verbal directions knowledge of street names aren’t generally shared equally. I know my knowledge of street names when im giving directions for the city I’ve lived in for almost 2 years is not great. I also commute by bicycle and don’t rely on GPS, just navigating by special awareness mostly.
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.