Can you text from the touch screen or do you have to use the Querty keyboard?

I've actually been experiencing some problems with regards to texting on my new LG Cosmos touch. I've had it for about a month now and whenever I get texts from certain numbers, it always freezes up. When I see the text notification and I click view now, the phone freezes and I never see the text. It usually goes back to the home screen but oftentimes I have to manually restart the phone. I'm basically a part of this club and they use this application called "groupme", once everyone adds the number to their phone, whenever someone texts the number every single person sees the text. It basically enables people to participate in a mobile chatroom. So, it's only these texts that I have problems with. I have 3 of these numbers on my phone and one of them works fine; it's the only one whose texts I can read without the phone freezing. the other two constantly give me problems and I am always having to restart my phone. I have tried taking out the battery for a few minutes and then placing it back in and that still doesn't work.