Sean Parker, one of the co-founders for Facebook, is now concerned that the social media site may be impacting children negatively instead of positively.
While speaking at an Axios event in Philadelphia on Wednesday, Parker bluntly admitted that Facebook created a "social-validation feedback loop" that he believes exploited "a vulnerability in human psychology."
Parker noted that in Facebook's earliest stages, he believed that even the most passionate and positive social media outlets would “eventually succumb to the urge to participate” according to The Week.
"When Facebook was getting going, I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, 'I'm not on social media,'" Parker commented. "And I would say, 'OK. You know, you will be.' And then they would say, 'No, no, no. I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence. I value intimacy.' And I would say, ... 'We'll get you eventually.'"
The main initiative of these social media platforms was to "consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible," Parker said.
He also added that the founders of other platforms, such as Instagram, were completely aware that their applications “preyed on the human desire for validation and attention.”
"It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other. … It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways," Parker said. "God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains."
The former president of the company, Parker still owns 4 percent of the company's shares, but says that he is now "something of a conscientious objector" towards social media at large.
Facebook recently experienced large amounts of backlash after allowing content backed by the Russian government to be able to reach 126 million users on Facebook during the last presidential election.