Facebook's founder president Sean Parker says social network exploits vulnerability in human psychology

Facebook's founding president Sean Parker said, the social network's founders knew they were creating something addictive that exploited ''a vulnerability in human psychology'' from the outset.

Parker, who became a billionaire thanks to Facebook, slammed the social networking giant at an Axios event in Philadelphia this week.

The founder and chair of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, was there to speak about advances in cancer therapies. However, he gave an insight into the early thinking at Facebook at a time when social media companies come under intense scrutiny from lawmakers over their power and influence.

Parker said, in the early days of Facebook people would tell him they were not on social media as they valued their real-life interactions.

''And I would say, 'OK. You know, you will be,' '' he said.

''I don't know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying,'' he added, pointing to ''unintended consequences'' that arise when a network grows more than 2 billion users strong.

''It iterally changes your relationship with society, with each other. It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains,'' he said.

Parker told Axios that the foundation of the social media site is a ''social-validation feedback loop'' and the algorithm subconsciously exploits psychological vulnerabilities of people.

''Which is exactly the kind of thing a hacker like myself would come up with,'' he said.

He added when a user received a "like' or a 'comment' on a post, it gave the users a ''little dopamine hit'', which encouraged them to want to post again.

He added, he has now become ''something of a conscientious objector'' to the rise of social media.

He added that the process behind developing Facebook was how it can ''consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible.''