Navigating a paper map.

You want to drive to a suburb of a big city. You have an address. The internet doesn't exist.

How do you get there? Well. You use a map. Almost every glove box would have a local and state map, if not a full map book like a Thomas brothers.

Memorizing phone numbers

If you knew how to drive, you most likely knew how to use a manual transmission.

Writing in cursive

Meeting up with people, no phone. You arrange a place and a time, and you show up, if the other person isn't there... You wait.

It was super important not to leave people hanging

Apparently recognizing and handling fascists.

Using a card catalog at the library to look up books.

Idling away the time, being bored.

Skill most people had:

• Sewing, at least basic sewing. Tailors were expensive, and if you just needed to shorten a pant leg, or fix a hole, you just sewed it. Nowadays mending clothes is almost pointless, given they're basically made to get holes in them immediately.
• Speaking quickly to avoid collect call fees. People would call home from a hospital phone, which would charge the receiver's bill if they accepted the call. The phone would ask for your name, and you'd say your message quickly, which lead to your parents at home getting a call from "Baby's a healthy boy" and then hanging up.

Difference: The whole world doesn't smell like cigarette smoke anymore. Even when I was a kid in the early 00s, it still smelled of cigarettes basically everywhere.

So y'know. We can't sew a patch on, or speed rap to avoid collect call fees, but at least drunk driving is illegal, and we have seatbelts

Cursive writing

Operating a slide rule. Managing a menstruation belt. Navigating adult life without having your own bank account (if you were a woman in the US). Mending clothes, ironing clothes, making clothes.

Writing thank you cards and letters.

Definitely more than 50 years ago, but this little piece of Americana is interesting

Families often had small nail-manufacturing setups in their homes; during bad weather and at night, the entire family might work at making nails for their own use and for barter. Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter: "In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail maker."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nail_(fastener)#History/

Reading card files in libraries.

Servicing and repairing many things in the house, but devices were far more easily diagnosed and repairable due to not being computerized. Really the “it’s broke and I gotta fix it” ability across age groups has really dried up. Doesn’t matter if it’s changing a tire on a car, or a kid having to fix a punctured tube on a bike tire to get to their friend’s house. They don’t ride anywhere for that matter. Changing brake pads. Changing the air filter in the home HVAC. People don’t do this stuff anymore.

Being bored.

Reading newspapers, books, magazines, etc. I don’t think people read as much anymore.

Hobbies. I think they’ve kinda died off, at least the physical ones. Model planes, trains, building stuff in your garage, cars, etc. Some of it’s been priced out of range or has gotten too technological for some, like cars, but manually creating something as a pastime has really disappeared.

Remembering a lot of phone numbers in your head.

I’m sure I’ll think of more, but it’s been a while since I was a kid and thought about pre-modern tech society.

Attention spans.

Basic shoe maintenance

What other things would be a big difference with the people today?

The lack of cigarette smoke everywhere, at least in the US and probably most other developed nations. In 1965, around 43% of American adults smoked. Today, just over 11% do. You no longer have to sit in the "non-smoking" section of a restaurant that still smells strongly of stale cigarettes. They no longer put ash trays or cigarette lighters in vehicles, which were a standard feature up to at least the late 90's.

Reading analog clocks

I saw an interesting thing about textiles recently. Sewing and knitting were considered basic essential skills until a generation or two ago.

Remembering phone numbers.

cursive writing

Reading cursive writing (especially from the 18th century or earlier).

There is no significant loss in total skill with each newer generation. The paradigm is constantly shifting. Humans have always adapted and learned to manage whatever is readily available to them and how to maintain it. Your parents complain you don't know their vintage skills. You complain they aren't learning new skills. You complain younger people don't know your "necessary" (vintage) skills.

"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise" - some guy in 1907 summarizing Greek beliefs.

The generation that can navigate whatever it is kids navigate (flipper zero?) can't modify an OS. The generation that can modify an OS probably can't tune a carburetor. The generation that can tune a carburetor probably can't change a horse shoe. Your skills are based on what you have to do every day. As technology removes the need to manage those things, the skill is lost and new skills replace it.

Social skills. Everyone, especially the young, seem more inward focused than ever.

Navigation. You used to remember the way to all these places. Now it's just on the phone.

Sewing/mending and other forms of repairing worn items.

Using a rotary phone. looking up a book in a card catalog. The ability to solve your own problems.

Mending clothing, basic auto repair and woodworking.