Why the Peanut App is a Waste of Time

I will shamelessly admit that I recently decided to try the Peanut app which is basically Tinder for moms. Ultimately I found that it’s a waste of time if you want to meet real friends.

Entering motherhood can be isolating, especially at first. In hindsight, I realize how lucky I was when I gave birth to my son in Richmond, Virginia where I was surrounded by a group of supportive women who had babies before me. They did everything from setting up a meal train when we left the hospital to giving me the insider tips to pumping and dumping. My first year was definitely challenging but I had mom friends and that made a big difference.

When my son was a year old we relocated to Ardmore, a small town on the mainline, in the Philadelphia suburbs. My husband and I both have close family members in Pennsylvania and we decided that we wanted to be closer to them. Overall I am genuinely happy with our choice to move back to Pennsylvania. The only thing that was missing for me was a solid group of women to navigate motherhood with.

I decided to go where I had never gone before, to using an online “dating” app to make mom friends. Someone had told me about Peanut awhile ago and I found the concept intriguing. Once we arrived in Ardmore I decided that it couldn’t hurt to put myself out there and give it a try. On the app, store Peanut is described as, “…a platform for like-minded women to meet and share interests beyond their children.” The keyword here is “meet.” Despite my best efforts, after using the app for about a month I got nowhere meeting any real mom friends.

Although I have never been on Tinder (shocking), based on the many stories I’ve heard from friends who have used it religiously, I understand enough to know that using Tinder typically results in action being taken. Some use it strictly for sex, others go on dates and a rare lucky few have even found their life partners. Regardless of how you use the app, those who give it a real chance often engage in some face-to-face meetings with people they’re interested in.

Now to be clear I made a real effort on this app before forming my opinions. First, I created a profile that took a decent amount of time. Your profile includes pictures, a bio, choosing your “packs” (wine time, strictly organic, hot mess, etc.), age of your child, work-life, languages and more. After my profile was complete I was under the impression that I was going to “swipe up” when I found moms who seemed like someone I would get along with. The app would notify me if other women had also “swiped up” for me and would notify us that we were a match. From there we could start a conversation and one would assume, meet up after some conversation or cease talking.

The problem was, I did all the work and it was not resulting in any “mom dates.” I connected with a few women who sounded like we were kindred spirits and one of us would suggest a meeting. All women agreed to arrange some type of meet and greet and then never followed through. I even went so far as to follow up with some of them. To date, I have received no response regarding actual hanging out.

Before giving Peanut a try I specifically chose not to read the reviews because I wanted to give it a chance without hearing others’ judgments. After coming to my own conclusions I started reading the reviews and have found many other I users have similar complaints. The app functions as it’s supposed to but most people aren’t interested in using it to make real friends.

Peanut is a revolutionary idea but it’s currently functioning as just one more virtual app to keep up on without any “real” results.