“Tinder” for Moms

Making mom friends as an adult is difficult enough. Making friends and being new to Cedar Rapids, a new-mom, and working from home during a pandemic? Ha. Pretty much impossible. When I first saw an ad for the app Peanut (where you literally swipe on profiles of other moms), l thought it was pretty laughable. It reminded me of Tinder, but like… for moms!? We all know that dating apps can be so cringey …but I met my husband on a dating app, so I guess I have a decent track record with “swiping.” So, I decided to try it. I took the leap, downloaded the app, and created a profile. Turns out, I am really glad that I did!

Peanut was created by a woman who worked on creating the dating app, Bumble. She got the idea because she was desperate to make mom-friends. I can totally relate to that struggle. Like on most dating apps, you can add photos to your profile. However, Peanut is based on more than your appearance. It’s website describes it as a place to “find friends and support.”

In addition to the photos, you can add other information to your profile. For example, this might be the age of your kids or your favorite band. When you create an peanut account, you have to verify it with a photo ID, which helped ease my concerns about safety. Creating a profile is really easy. When I created mine, I added a couple of photos of just myself and I answered a few questions. Some examples of the question prompts are “What your favorite shows were to binge on Netflix?” and “What your goals were of using the app?”. Another cute feature is that you can add tags about yourself to your profile that say things like “pet lover” or “powered by caffeine.”

Once you start “swiping” you scroll through profiles and swipe up if you think you have a lot in common with a certain mom and want to start up a friendship.

You can only send a message if you both match with each other, but either one of you can start up the conversation. At first, I thought that sending a message might make me feel awkward, but it’s important to remember that there is no harm in putting yourself out there! Before long I was having several fun conversations with other moms. The cool thing about it is that it is location based, so you’re only viewing profiles in your general vicinity.

I matched with a few other moms and really hit it off with one because we both love Gilmore Girls and coffee – so it was easy to keep the chat going. After we messaged back and forth for a while, we decided to meet for coffee. I was super nervous but it went great, and I made my first mom-friend! Since then we have met up for coffee a few more times and we plan to get together to play board games and introduce our husbands.

I also ran across a profile of someone who is related to my husband. I had never thought of reaching out to her before – but she was a new mom too, so of course we already had a lot in common to connect on! Overall, I would say that using the app Peanut has been a fun experience. Let’s be honest, we all spend a lot of time on our phones. The app has a lot of cool additional features that I am excited to explore, and I think that Peanut helping moms meet other moms through modern technology is awesome!

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