Could it be that during his time in high school and his freshman year, he received such a cool education that he would become technically advanced?
Probably yes, mentioning that time around 2010 owning a computer is a lot considering it's expensive, at least in my place when you have a computer and internet connection, mean you have the resources and money.
LOL, no! Owning a personal computer 12 years ago was actually much more common than you suggest. I don't have the exact source of the numbers, but I'm sure over 70% of households in developed countries owned a PC with a broadband internet connection. I mean, we're talking about a time where the iPhone was already in its fourth generation.
Yeah, Iphone 4 was released on 24th June and were kinda cool guy if you had it. At that time computer wasn't an impressive thing and most of the families already had one PC. At that time probably computer was a thing in poor countries. In my country (Germany) up to one million people had access to Cable internet. Fiber to the Home has become available since 2011.
I think the behavior of people was a little different at that time. From my experience, almost everyone was either doing office job via computer or playing Dota, WOW, MU, Counter-Strike, Half-Life. Forums and social medias weren't as popular/active as they are today, so, lack of information about innovations was very common.