> You don't need to pay attention in talks for any of those benefits. It might even be detrimental. It might be detrimental to attend to many talks rather than

> You don't need to pay attention in talks for any of those benefits. It might even be detrimental. It might be detrimental to attend to many talks rather than chatting with people, etc. But while you are sitting there you might as well pay attention; most of what you are doing on your phone/computer could probably be done at another time. I know about the fact that the point of a conference is much more than the talks, but I still think that people usually don't make enough of an effort to pay attention to the talks while they are attending them.