Ori Brafman is the co-author of Click: The Magic of Instant Connections, published by Random House this week.

With all the news about Facebook’s never-ending privacy problems and the exodus of angry users, has the real story been overlooked? Specifically, is Facebook limiting people’s ability to actually, well, connect?

Along with my brother Rom, who is a psychologist, I’ve been researching what makes people form instant connections. From meeting someone at a work party to that special spark on a first date, instant connections aren’t just intense; they can have a substantial effect on the overall tenor of the ensuing relationship. Research has shown that teams that click tend to work more effectively together and couples that had love at first sight are more passionate with each other even after twenty years.

Facebook indeed fosters some of these connections, and we all know of stories of people who met online, chatted, and subsequently got married. But there are specific factors, or accelerators, that trigger such connections — and there are three that Facebook is seriously lacking: Physical proximity, vulnerability and a clearly defined community.

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Proximity

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Social psychologists have found that the distance separating people greatly influences the likelihood of a connection. Think back to your friends in school. How many of them had a last name that began with a letter close to yours on the alphabet? That’s because teachers routinely assign seats alphabetically based on last name. The closer you sat to someone, the more likely you were to hit it off. When a researcher asked police cadets to name their friends from the academy, ninety percent of them named someone who sat adjacent to them. Likewise, scientists proved more likely to collaborate with other scientists who sat in the same corridor.

Those last few feet separating people really matter. While Facebook might create digital proximity, it’s impossible to recreate the intimacy of sitting next to someone. Of course, Facebook can’t do much about proximity, but there are two other factors it can do something about.

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Vulnerability

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Research shows that vulnerability builds trust. Think of the types of things you tell someone whom you’re growing close to: You might open up about your likes and dislikes or share stories from your past. Psychologists have found that these types of revelations make us more likely to connect because we become vulnerable and open, showing we trust those we disclose to. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to be vulnerable on Facebook. Facebook used to be an intimate community that only included your college buddies.

Now, the company is starting to be perceived as Big Brother-like. If we write on someone’s wall, who else will see it? If we comment on someone’s status, whose newsfeed will it show up in? Sometimes it’s as if Facebook is a hidden microphone that threatens to expose what we’d really like to say. Without that ability to be vulnerable, it is difficult to really connect with friends.

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Defined Community

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Ultimately, this all comes down to a sense of community. Think of how close people get with their freshman dorm mates. You’re all new at school and together you form a clear, delineated community. Researchers have found that when people feel like they belong to such a community, they’re much more likely to bond. You’re in a “safe container” — that is, you’re all part of the experience together, and you form your own little unit.

It used to be that a group of Facebook friends felt like a separate and delineated group. As the site shares more and more information with the “outside,” the walls of the community — that clear delineation — are becoming more porous and less effective at building bonds. Again, this negatively affects our ability to connect with others on the site.

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Conclusion

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Facebook is unintentionally doing one thing right in terms of building connections, and that’s providing shared adversity. Unfortunately, that adversity is Facebook itself. We’re more likely to bond with a stranger when we’re stranded together in the airport or waiting in an obscenely long line. Likewise, studies have shown that soldiers who go through battle together are much more likely to stay in touch years after the war than their counterparts who didn’t see combat. In a way, by dishing out a never-ending assault on privacy, Facebook is uniting its users by giving them a healthy dose of shared pain.

So what can Facebook do? It can remember that the focus is on friendship, on building meaningful experiences with friends. To foster that, it can create a context of trust, of safety, and of true connections.