He’s best known as an internet and technology billionaire, having founded Facebook in 2004, but where did Mark Zuckerberg grow up?
Mark Zuckerburg was born in New York and grew up in and around the state. He didn’t relocate out of the state until he attended Harvard in Massachusetts.
Read on to learn more about the fascinating early life of Mark Zuckerberg.
Boy Prodigy
Today, Mark Zuckerberg is known for the creation of Facebook. This is the world’s largest social media platform, and has been overwhelmingly successful since its foundation in 2004. The project has cemented Zuckerberg as one of the world’s most prominent tech and software giants.
The Facebook project had secured Zuckerberg an eye-watering eighty-six billion dollars by 2020. At the age of just thirty-six, he was one of the richest people on the planet. This is owed majorly to him being the chairman, CEO and controlling shareholder of Facebook.
All his life, Zuckerberg has been a rather unsuspecting figure. He’s considerably plain, and didn’t have a remarkable upbringing. While his parents were fairly wealthy, Mark and his three sisters didn’t have lavish childhoods.
They were raised in a village a few miles north of Manhattan, New York. There were plenty of educational opportunities for the young Zuckerberg, who excelled academically. He showed great promise in mathematics, physics, historical studies and astronomy.
His parents nurtured this academic streak, and encouraged him to study endlessly. He would come to learn multiple languages and start to specialize in computers from around ten years of age, in the nineties.
His father used his own knowledge to educate Zuckerberg, before outsourcing this aspect. He actually hired an experienced software developer to train Mark in private. While still in high school, Zuckerberg was coding software and building computer games.
To Harvard
Zuckerberg left New York to study at Harvard in Massachusetts. While he, he became renowned as a programming prodigy. Although he was studying psychology, he focused more on his other topic: computer science.
The idea for Facebook occurred while he was studying at Harvard. The concept came around based on a juvenile service Zuckerberg had already created. In this, students would vote on a Face Book of people, determining who was ‘hottest’.
It was in February of 2004 that Facebook was launched, and history was made. Ultimately, Zuckerberg would never finish college, dropping out in his sophomore year. He decided to pursue Facebook in earnest, recognising its potential. However, in 2017, Zuckerberg was awarded an honorary degree from the university.
In The Public Eye
Unfortunately, Mark Zuckerberg was destined to have a difficult time in the spotlight. As he was one of the richest men in the world, and dramatically powerful, he was subject to mass scrutiny. His private and professional lives came under fire on many occasions.
In 2018, Zuckerberg was forced to testify in front of the U.S. Congress. This was in response to allegations of breaches and misuse of personal data, taken from Facebook users. The nature of Facebook’s data collection and usage has long been disputed and investigated.
Zuckerberg hasn’t allowed these bumps in the road to deter him, however. In 2010, a movie was made based on the early life of Zuckerberg and development of Facebook. You can see the trailer for this movie on YouTube below. As he marched onwards through technology, he proposed another massive project in 2013.
Zuckerberg announced a project called Internet.org. In this, he endeavoured to provide internet access to the billions of people that were – at that point – not connected. Although this was met with political and technical limitations in some areas of the world, Zuckerberg persisted.
There’s no doubt that his life has been studded with success and triumph. He may have started as an academic child in New York, but as of 2020 he was a multi-billionaire living on a seven million dollar estate in California.