This is one of those moments where I’m going to eat the words I wrote 18 months ago.

In a previous article, I talked about how technology has killed millennial communication.  Bloomberg Business loved it.  And while I still stand by my assessment that many millennials don’t know how to look someone in the eye and give them a solid handshake, I’m going to take a step back.

It’s not that millennials don’t know how to communicate.  It’s simply that they’ve evolved.  And evolution has both good sides and bad sides.

First, let’s look at the stats.

According to a Nielsen study, 83 percent of millennials say they sleep with their smartphones. (I think 17% of them overslept and missed the study).

A Cisco study found that 56 percent of millennials won't accept jobs from companies that ban social media.

An Odesk study found that 89 percent of millennials would prefer to choose when and where they work rather than being in a 9-to-5 position, and 45 percent would rather be able to work from home than make more money.

An Intrepid study found that 48 percent say word-of-mouth (specifically social media) influences their purchasing decisions over TV ads. 63% stay updated on brands through social networks.

A study by Millennial Branding found that 50 percent of college millennials say they don't need a physical classroom. 53 percent believe online colleges are reputable. And 39% view the future of education as being virtual.

How prepared are they to enter the workforce? A 2013 study (which might as well be 100 years ago at this point) commissioned by Bentley University found that 35 percent of business leaders assigned a score of "C" or lower on preparedness to recent college grads they've hired. And get this - 37 percent of those grads gave themselves the same grade range.

A 2013 State of St. Louis Workforce study found that a lack of communication skills and poor work ethic, along with a lack of critical thinking and problem solving skills were the biggest shortcomings of the job applicants - far outpacing a lack of technical skills such as math and computer.

How did this happen??

It's not rocket science, folks. You've probably seen the videos on YouTube. Babies sitting on mom's lap...trying to "swipe" the pages on the magazine that mom is holding as if she were using an iPad.

Entire coffee shops filled with people sitting together and ignoring each other as they text on their smart phone.

People who don't know how to maintain eye contact.

20-somethings who don't know how to properly shake your hand (hint - always touch webbing and never let your wrist go limp).

People who have no interest in attending their class reunion, as I wrote about previously,because they already know what everyone in their class has been doing.

Doorbells? What are those? "Text u when i get there"

Landline? Never heard of it. Text me, bro.

Rock concerts where people don't hold up lighters, they hold up cell phones.

Presidents who can't give a speech without a teleprompter.

People falling in front of trains don't get a hand...they get YouTubed.

Yes, it's a stereotype of an entire generation and how they communicate.

But there’s another reality of it that we need to discuss.  Which is that in some ways, millennials know how to communicate more efficiently than any other generation.

They are adept at integrating digital communication and influencer marketing with their one-on-one engagements to achieve greater results in a shorter time frame, in many cases.

Take a look at the study from Adobe.  It found that at work, millennials put more stock in interpersonal interaction than digital interaction.  Although 81 percent of millennials said "state of the art technology" was more important to a perfect workplace than perks, a full 55 percent of them said they value in-person communication over digital.

Now check this out.  46 percent of those same millennial respondents expected their peers to value IM and texts over in-person communication…but the real number was only 11 percent.

Older generations often use the example of couples who are out to dinner at a restaurant and ignoring each other.

“They are looking at their phones and not even talking to each other!”

True.  Very true.  But the reality of it is that if you took that same couple and replaced them with older people without cell phones, chances are they’d still be ignoring each other.  They’d just be eavesdropping on the table next to them instead of engaging with a world wide audience at their fingertips.

So perhaps it’s time you lay off the millennials and start taking a page out of their book – er – iPhone.  You might just learn a lesson in efficiency.  Just don’t expect them all to know how to shake your hand when you thank them.

Kyle Reyes is President and CEO of The Silent Partner Marketing. He’s also an acclaimed keynote speaker on entrepreneurship, leadership, marketing and social media. You can find him on Facebook, LinkedIn and Snapchat @dasilentpartner.