  Among the general population, students are especially sensitive to social
media and smartphones because of their pervasiveness. Several studies have
shown that there is a negative correlation between social media and academic
performance since they can lead to behaviors that hurt students' careers, e.g.,
addictedness. However, these studies either focus on smartphones and social
media addictedness or rely on surveys, which only provide approximate
estimates. We propose to bridge this gap by i) parametrizing social media usage
and academic performance, and ii) combining smartphones and time diaries to
keep track of users' activities and their smartphone interaction. We apply our
solution on the 72 students participating in the SmartUnitn project, which
investigates students' time management and their academic performance. By
analyzing the logs of social media apps on students' smartphones and by
comparing them to students' credits and grades, we can provide a quantitative
and qualitative estimate of negative and positive correlations. Our results
show the negative impact of social media usage, distinguishing different
influence patterns of social media on academic activities and also underline
the need to control the smartphone usage in academic settings.
