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for the first time ever this year, the American Library Association's annual conference had a gaming pavilion, showcasing efforts to reach a demographic — tweens, teens and 20-somethings — that's tough to pull into the library.

Then there's just the overall focus on puzzle-solving, Danforth noted. Unlike books, games often have multiple story lines, depending on decisions that gamers make along the way. In the overall scheme of things, deploying a warrior for one job and a wizard for another isn't that much different from a boss sending an engineer out for one task and a public relations professional for another.

teenagers frequently received digital threats or upsetting requests from people they were dating. But the teenagers were not talking about it, did not know how to handle it and did not know what was appropriate and what was not.

“It was abuse that there was no protocol around,” Mr. Law said. The parents were not aware of the interactions, and the teenagers did not know how to prevent it, he said.

The campaign and its Web site, ThatsNotCool.com, encourage teenagers to set their own boundaries. It is intended to appeal to all teenagers, not just those with serious problems. “The kids don’t want to be told what’s right and what’s wrong,” Mr. Law said. On the site, teenagers can send one of 35 “callout cards” — brightly colored messages they can send by e-mail, post to their Facebook or MySpace accounts or download — that are meant to tell someone they have crossed a line. The messages are sharp. For example: “Congrats! With that last text, you’ve achieved stalker status.”

The site offers an area where teenagers can seek advice, like how to stop a boyfriend from nonstop text-messaging. For more direct advice, the site tells teenagers to call or conduct a live chat with trained volunteers.

The campaign is digitally focused, reflecting the way teenagers communicate. Even the posters that will appear in schools, which display some of the “callout card” messages, ask viewers to snap a photo with their cellphone and text-message it to someone.

All of the communications are aimed at teenagers, not parents. Ms. Soler said the fund was working on a campaign to alert parents to problems, but for now, she wanted to get teenagers discussing them.“We want to give them the tools to say ‘You can have a healthy relationship, and here’s the road map,’ ” Ms. Soler said.