Ex-employees of Facebook Inc., Apple Inc. and Google LLC have come together to warn against some of the ill effects tech may have on people’s lives.

“Technology is hijacking our minds and society,” the new group, called the Center for Humane Technology, says on its website, echoing what a lot of people have said for a long time regarding the overuse and misuse of technology.

Much of the criticism concerning technology addiction has been aimed at social media use. Last year Facebook’s former vice president for user growth, Chamath Palihapitiya, warned about the less appealing aspects of social media. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg later said that the company’s focus was now to make sure Facebook “isn’t just fun to use, but also good for people’s well-being and for society.”

The group will kick off the campaign with the nonprofit media watchdog Common Sense Media, targeting 55,000 U.S. public schools. The first of the campaigns, “The Truth About Tech,” will offer advice to those working in the tech industry on how they might create products that better serve humanity.

“We’re not anti-tech,” Common Sense founder and Chief Executive James P. Steyer told CNN Monday. “We are into the appropriate and balanced use of technology. We are calling out the industry for their excesses and their intentional effects to manipulate and addict.”

Former Google design ethicist and cofounder of the group Tristan Harris has been critical of what he feels are manipulative technology designs. In the past, he accused tech companies of “drilling into our brains” and creating a “civilization-scale mind control machine.”

Investor Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook and a founder of the group, shared similar sentiments with The New York Times, which first reported the story on the coalition Sunday. “Facebook appeals to your lizard brain, primarily fear and anger,” McNamee said. “And with smartphones, they’ve got you for every waking moment.” He said he now wants to help right a wrong that he was part of creating.

Not surprisingly, it has been pointed out numerous times that it sounds hypocritical when someone who made vast wealth from such addictive technologies now defames it. Steyer said as much to the Times.

“You see a degree of hypocrisy with all these guys in Silicon Valley,” he said. Napster creator and early Facebook investor Sean Parker joined the chorus of anti-social-media evangelists last year when he said, “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook was also openly critical this year concerning kids using social media.

CNN said Harris and Steyer will talk about the group Wednesday at the Truth About Tech conference in Washington, D.C.

Image: Gauthier DELECROIX via Flickr