Jamie Dimon says TikTok and Facebook are a 'total stupid waste of time' and people should read books instead

Kwan Wei Kevin Tan
Updated
Jamie Dimon speaking at The New York Times Dealbook Summit; A smartphone screen displaying the logo of several social media apps like Facebook and TikTok.
"For most of you guys, turn off TikTok, Facebook. A total stupid waste of time," JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told students at the Georgetown Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy's Financial Markets Quality Conference.Slaven Vlasic via Getty Images; Matt Cardy via Getty Images

  • Jamie Dimon says that young people should spend less time on TikTok and Facebook.

  • "A total stupid waste of time," the JPMorgan chief said of the two social-media platforms.

  • Reading widely and consuming history books, Dimon said, would be a better use of their time.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says young people should spend less time on social-media platforms and more time reading books.

Dimon was speaking at the Georgetown Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy's annual Financial Markets Quality Conference when he was asked whether he had any advice for the students there.

"For most of you guys, turn off TikTok, Facebook. A total stupid waste of time," Dimon said.

Reading widely and consuming history books, Dimon said, would be a far better use of their time.

"My advice to students: Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. If you're Democrat, read the Republican opinion, the good ones. If you're Republican, read the Democrat ones," Dimon said earlier in his response.

"Read history books. You can't make it up. Nelson Mandela, Abe Lincoln, Sam Walton. You only learn by reading and talking to other people. There's no other way," he added.

Representatives for Dimon at JPMorgan, TikTok, and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.

Unlike most business executives, Dimon keeps a relatively low profile on social media.

Besides LinkedIn, Dimon doesn't use platforms like Facebook, X, or TikTok — though he did admit in 2021 to having an Instagram account under a fake username.

Dimon also criticized social media this year in his annual letter to shareholders, saying that the platforms needed to do more to address problems they had created.

"There is no question that social media has some real negative effects, from the manipulation of elections to the increasingly documented negative effects on the mental health of children," Dimon wrote.

"These are issues impacting our individual and collective spheres," he added, "and it's time for social media companies to take more action to remedy these challenges — and swiftly."

Read the original article on Business Insider

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