Don't treat them as if they do. They are nothing more than a mirror, a reflection, a shadow of human experience. In short, computer literacy is knowing what a computer can and cannot do. The next step is learning to know what kind of computer tool to use to accomplish specific computing tasks. For librarians, these computing tasks usually involve editing text, organizing text, and disseminating text.
Word processors provide the means for providing hilighting, footnoting, and stylizing text.
Text editors are generally less computing resource intensive. Since they do not offer the means for formatting text, they force you to consider what you are writing instead of what it looks like. Text editors are also the sorts of tools you use to edit configuration files, HTML files, and program source code. Therefore, the files you create with text editors WILL be readable by ANY other computer. Files created with text editors are universally readable by any other computing platform.