The benefits of peer pressure?

Basically my friends and I are sat in the school's computer room, desperatly avoiding doing our UCAS personal statement and we start talking about blogs (after googling ourselves, like all good bored teenagers) and I brought up mine (after a quick disclaimer that it was basically just me talking aloud to myself online.) So, as they try and decide whether or not to create their own, they challenged me to write one right now, completely kill any attempts at productive work.

Anyway, I'm taking up their challenge and writing about the benefits of peer pressure (rather suitably, I thought).

I honestly think peer pressure is not as negative as everyone makes it out to be. Dictionary.com defines it as: 'The social influence a peer group exerts on its individual members, as each member attempts to conform to the expectations of the group. ( See conformity.)' Some other sites define as being pressured to do a certain action. If you say peer pressure people think 'bad' or 'smoking' (which is definately still bad even if peer pressure isn't) but sometimes, you do need to be pressured into fitting in.

Explaining a bit more. I first did NaNoWriMo (50,000 word novel in a month) in 2010. The reason I finished was because I was in a group with 4 of my friends and a whole bunch of strangers who were all doing the same thing and winning. So, not to be left out, I pulled two all-nighters and limped across the line with 30 minutes to spare before the deadline. That and December 1st would have been really awkward with all my friends saying how they won and I hadn't (and that one friend who laughed when I took up the challenge as I couldn't even do my 1 sheet of homework on time). I'd consider that peer pressure.

Also, 'each member attempts to conform to the expectation of the group'. Without peer pressure expecting me to be at least a little bit less weird, I would be completely, unarguably insane. So that's quite a good point, I reckon, because being madder than I already am would be really odd.

Peer pressure is society's way of tempering people's personalities from an extreme and encouraging people to do things they might never do otherwise, good or bad. So maybe, people should give peer pressure a chance, every now and then.

Besides, if it weren't for peer pressure, I wouldn't have anything to write for today. This is definately a good thing