With the use of social media for academic purposes gaining in popularity, the underlying motivation for this study was to seek a detailed understanding of its impact on students' academic performance. A survey of 334 first-year students in accounting courses at five Australian higher education institutions was undertaken to evaluate the different types of academic engagement through social media and impacts on students' academic performance. Using the Connectivist theory, the study aimed to relate social media use to different types of academic engagement and students' academic performance. Our key finding is to identify the establishment of self-initiated mentor--mentee relationships through social media use for academic purposes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first academic article that has applied the four Principles of Connectivism to understand the use of social media for academic networking amongst students in Australia.