Technology is credited for amazing advances throughout our lives — in medicine, education, and in science. But the simple text message is causing heartache.

Remember when you were a teenager? Maybe you were in a relationship and it was coming to an end. Breaking up isn’t easy, but back then it was done face to face, on the phone … or maybe in a letter. But these days, more teenagers are breaking up through text messaging.

Welcome to the Break-up Summit 3.0. Tinisha White is a Boston teen.

“Us teenagers are addicted to technology, so that’s the way we get out of the whole face-to-face. We tend to just text someone to break it off with someone. And that’s not really healthy. That shows you don’t really respect the person you was in a committed relationship with,” she said.

White is a peer leader for a July 26 youth summit put on by the Boston Public Health Commission. Over 250 teenagers and youth service organizations came together at Simmons College to discuss healthy relationships and healthy breakups.

Nicole Daley is program director for the commission’s Start Strong Boston, which organized the event in collaboration with Simmons.

“We really think about this issue from a primary prevention lens,” she said. “We really think about how do we reach as many teens as possible and as early as possible and thinking about healthy relationships and thinking about all the stuff they can take to have support, trust, communication, honesty. “

Over the past 2 years, Start Strong Boston’s Break-up Summit has become a landmark summer event for Boston’s teens, and received national attention for encouraging youth to talk about these issues. Past themes have included “Face it, Don’t Facebook It” and portrayals of breakups in the media.

Daley said the theme for this year’s summit came from the teens themselves.

“We asked them what are some of the things adults aren’t talking about with teens in terms of breakups. And they said ‘cheating.’ That not enough adults are having conversations with them about ways to avoid it or how to respectfully end the relationship before cheating occurs. And so that’s the impetus for this summit,” Daley said.

So after 5 hours of workshops, skits and discussions, what were some of the takeaways?

“I really want people to understand that face-to-face is the best way to break up. I really want people to understand that cheating is not OK because someone is getting hurt and it’s really disrespectful to hurt someone that you say that you care about,” White said. “That blows their self-esteem. And that really bothers me. You don’t want to make someone feel less than because you’re doing something to them.”

A smart message not just for teenagers but for any generation.