Facebook has been attacked by one of its founding members for "exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology" and putting children's mental health at risk.

Sean Parker, the former president of Facebook who joined Mark Zuckerberg's company in its first months, said the company's founders intentionally built the site to consume as much human attention as possible.

Parker, who has made billions as an early shareholder in the social network, also criticised Facebook's effect on children. "It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other," he told newsite Axios. "It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains."

"The inventors, creators... understood this consciously. And we did it anyway," Parker said.

Parker, a former hacker who founded file-sharing website Napster, said he had become a "conscientious objector" to the social networking site. His stint at Facebook was shortlived, resigning from the site in 2005 after a cocaine scandal.