Mark Zuckerberg's Bedtime Ritual With Daughters Max And August Reveals The Four Values He Wants To Pass Down—And Why He Calls It 'The Good Night Things'

Mark Zuckerberg may be renowned for creating Meta Platforms Inc. META owned Facebook and shaping the internet as we know it today, but at home, he is like any father trying to ground his daughters in values, family, and reflection. In a podcast, he talked about a bedtime ritual he practices with his daughters, Max and August, which he calls "The Good Night Things."

What Happened: "Every night when I put my daughters to bed, we go through this thing and, like, they call it ‘the good night things,'" Zuckerberg explained on the Lex Fridman podcast.

The ritual includes a conversation about four core values that Zuckerberg wants to instill in his children: health, relationships, excitement for the future, and kindness. "What do I want them to remember and just have really ingrained in them as they grow up?" he reflected.

The nightly list starts with health: "Making sure that you take care of yourself and keep yourself in good shape." The second is loving friends and family, which Zuckerberg says is "perhaps one of the most important things." The third something that they are excited about for the future. "I think the way we navigate [life] is that we have things that we’re looking forward to," he said.

And finally, each night ends with the question: "What did you do today to help someone?" "It can be as simple as, ‘I helped set the table for lunch,'" he said. "But that's sort of like… if you were to boil down my overall life philosophy into what I try to impart to my kids, those are the things that I think are really important."

Why It Matters: Zuckerberg has presented himself as a ‘family man' in various media appearances over the years. Last year, he shared via Instagram that he was designing a custom Porsche as a special gift for his wife, Priscilla Chan.

Describing it as a "new side quest," he revealed that the entire redesign was rooted in her preferences. Earlier in the same year, he commissioned a marble statue of Chan, posting a photo on Instagram with the caption: “Bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife.”

Despite these public expressions of family values and teaching his daughters about the importance of compassion for fellow human beings, Zuckerberg and Meta have faced repeated scrutiny for questionable business practices, such as measures undertaken to infiltrate the Chinese market and employing lobbying tactics in India; allegedly silencing ex-employees speaking out about issues like the company’s connections to China, harming teen users, and workplace misconduct and unfairly laying off workers despite strong track records.

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