A FORMER Facebook executive said he feels “tremendous guilt” over the creation of the site – adding “we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works”.

Chamath Palihapitiya, former vice president for user growth, said social media was leaving users “vacant and empty”.

Speaking at Stanford Graduate School of Business, he added people to take a “hard break from some of these tools”.

The 41-year-old added: “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works.

“No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. This is a global problem.

“We are in a really bad state of affairs right now.”

Mr Palihapitiya went on to say the company “overwhelmingly does positive good”, but added: “We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection because we get rewarded in these short term signals - hearts, likes, thumbs up. What it is is fake brittle popularity.”