SUMMARY
The higher education provision in Chile ´s Metropolitan Region is located almost entirely (99,9%) in the thirty- four municipalities that form the compact city. Within this supply, almost 70% is located in 4 municipalities, which are in the east part of the city. That forces young inhabitants of suburbs and periurban zones of Santiago to develop intense and frequent urban mobility among their localities and -far located- educational centres. There is some evidence about loss of social life in workers with similar urban conditions, but there is no evidence about how this experience may affect young people free time and uses of the city (considering they are experiencing strong changes in their mobility patterns, from local to urban scale mobility). Through episodic interviews, social cartography and shadowing, this paper addresses that issue. Results show that when young people start higher education, their mobility habits change generating unexpected repercussions in their familiar and social life. The paper concludes that periurban students are subject to a strong temporal-space pressure, which finally promotes fragmentation of their social life.