We now leave navigation to our phones. The result: more of us are getting hopelessly lost | John Harris

“We know from incident reports that more and more people are tempted into risky locations by Instagram posts and the navigation apps being used aren’t always suitable for an outdoor environment,” he said. The result is that “individuals online can be virtually connected but environmentally detached from the surrounding world, inhabiting a confused realm of spatial illiteracy”. In that sense, people’s inability to find their way through the physical world reflects our declining skills at navigation more generally – and through information in particular. More broadly, we clearly need to talk about improving people’s understanding of what the countryside is like up close, and how to get around it – a conversation that might revive interest in the much-mocked subject of geography. Here, perhaps, is the key to reconnecting the world we see on our phones and the one we have to actually deal with.