Mark Zuckerberg has some life advice for any youngsters tempted to marry into money.

Don't date the nerd, BE the nerd.

The Facebook co-founder posted this week about setting goals for 2016, prompting one fan to reveal she'd effectively been telling her granddaughters to scour their yearbooks for the kid voted ‘most likely to become an internet billionaire’, writing, “I keep telling my grand daughters to Date the nerd in school, he may turn out to be a Mark Zuckerberg! [sic]”

But Zuckerberg, 31, wasn't having any of it, replying: “Even better would be to encourage them to *be* the nerd in their school so they can be the next successful inventor!”

At time of writing, Zuckerberg's empowering response was inching toward 30,000 thumbs up from the Facebook community.

The entrepreneur, who sets himself a personal challenge every year, had revealed that his aim for 2016 is to “build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work. You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man.” Obviously.

Before riding roughshod over everyone else's half-hearted resolutions to try and drink less or perhaps go to the gym once in a while, Zuckerberg's announcement of his baby daughter's birth late last year was similarly grandiose, as he and wife Priscilla Chan took the opportunity to also announce their latest philanthropic endeavour – giving away 99% of their Facebook shares during their lifetimes “to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation”.

Zuckerberg has been full of the joys of fatherhood since baby Max's arrival, posting several sweet pictures of family life and taking two months' paternity leave.

He was praised in July for bringing the subject of miscarriage to the fore when announcing the pregnancy, the couple having unfortunately suffered three losses in recent years while trying to start a family.

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Images: facebook.com/zuck