The secret world of youths online: learning civics? (Curriculum update: the latest developments in math, science, language arts and social studies).

Chat rooms and the latest music and fashion trends will probably always be favorite Internet destinations for young Web surfers. Meanwhile, trends such as declining voter turnout and decreasing participation in civic institutions--especially among young people--have been on the rise for decades.

The Center for Media Education, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., has begun a year-long research project that aims to combine the growth of Internet use with a democratic renewal.

President and Co-founder Kathryn Montgomery observes that we tend to hear a lot about the online recreational pursuits and consumer behavior of young people. "But young people are also using the Internet these days to register to vote, to debate issues of war and peace, even to become social activists," she says. "Our study will be the first systematic effort to map this `youth civic landscape' in the new digital media."

From nonprofit organization sites that promote volunteerism to sites that young people have created to contribute to social change, CME hopes to document online youth civic activity of all types. Deputy Director Barbara Gottlieb says the organization would welcome input from education leaders on how this research relates to their needs and in what formats it would be most useful. She expects a "virtual tour" of the research, including some links to exemplary civic engagement sites, to be up on CME's Web site this fall.

Funded through a grant from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, the project is part of its multi-year initiative on youth, media and civic engagement. www.cme.org