How come you never see "Teenager drives for 14 hours, crashes and dies," or, "Teenager runs marathon for 14 hours, has heart attack and dies?" It's not really news that drastically overusing a product or engaging in an activity for about four times the recommended duration will be bad for you. But no one wants to raise awareness for those examples because it's assumed that only videogamers are far too stupid to realize that heart palpation and shortness of breath are signs that you probably should stop what you're doing.
It's obvious that games aren't meant to played that long and saying that we need to make sure gamers know that playing for 16-hour stretches is bad, well, that's a lot like saying we need to raise awareness amongst homosexuals that gay sex for 16-hour stretches is bad; first off, it uses false, prejudiced data to make it out as though the action is somehow inherently more dangerous than any other action, which it isn't, and secondly it assumes that the target group is too stupid to get the concept of moderation. It's prejudicial to want to warn gamers to not overuse their entertainment method and then afterwards just assume that the people who use equally "dangerous" entertainments are smart enough to not need the warning. Gamers aren't stupid and any kind of society or organization of non-gamers to "help them" just reeks of the stereotype that gamers are stupid and irresponsible and fat, which is of course ridiculous.
On my off-days, I play four hours or so. It's really my only gaming time; I stare at a computer all day during the workday so my eyes are too tired for gaming after my normal 8-5. Also that figure is way too low now that I've started replaying Oblivion...
