It depends what you&#x27;re doing with it.<p>I find that if I sit doing nothing in a somewhat boring meeting, my mind will wander and I&#x27;ll often zone out completely.<p>Whereas if I use my phone to play simple visual games which don&#x27;t require any language processing (e.g. freecell), I&#x27;m much more able to concentrate on what the speaker is saying.<p>It&#x27;s not quite as good as listening properly, but overall I think listening to everything with half an ear (or more) is better than missing parts of the meeting entirely. And if anything directly relevant comes up I can stop and focus.