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So it's not because the money is gone or anything, but the assets they own have fallen in price, so that the wealth they have isn't real money but the total value of all assets.
Exactly, and hopefully OP understands this. When the media reports that Elon Musk has lost billions in a day, they're basically using mark-to-market accounting based on how much Tesla stock he owns or some other yardstick. It isn't as if billions of dollars suddenly went missing from his bank account--it's a "paper loss", not something the average person experiences or has to worry about. Even Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and other uber-wealthy people aren't seen crying about those kinds of losses, because things could go in the opposite direction within days or weeks.
In the case of Zuckerberg, I think he recouped a lot of his paper loss in the past few weeks when Meta stock rebounded from the big dip in October of last year (though it had been going down steadily long before that). OP, if you want some solid advice: don't pay attention to 90% of what the media tells you, especially if it has to do with finance.