You can send a text message to cast your vote for an American Idol. You can send one to get registration forms to vote for president. Many teens and young adults “text” as a way to flirt or chat through a boring lecture. But there’s another side to the ubiquitous technology. A 14-year-old South Carolina girl used a text message to rescue herself from an earthen dungeon. And a 16-year-old used the cell phone she’d recently received as a birthday present to send a parting message to her family before a gunman in her Colorado school fatally shot her. A disgraced former lawmaker used IMs to flirt with underage congressional pages. Every day, millions of short messages fly through the ether cell-to-cell or between computers and cell phones. We use them to do our banking, to enter sweepstakes, answer polls, donate to charity. And as recent events have shown us, they can save lives–or do harm.