Lilia Buckingham Is So Much More Than An Influencer

there really are triple threats, and then there really are sextuple threats like Lilia Buckingham, who at 17 is already a successful actress, author, influencer, activist, model, and dancer. These days, Buckingham mainly divides her attention between finishing her upcoming novel Influence about a murder in the social media space, starring in Brat TV series Crown Lake, and working with the anti-bullying agency Positively Social. Nevertheless she’s also a totally fledged influencer who’s devoted to growing her online presence, which includes 1.7 million followers on Instagram to date.


Although Buckingham transcends influencer stereotypes. She practices healthy social media habits, like turning to Pinterest for a creative recharge any time Instagram becomes also much, and encourages her followers to prioritize their mental health as well. “When you’re spending all of your time on [social media] so realize once you come off [that] you don’t feel good about yourself, that’s as soon as it becomes unhealthy,” Buckingham told MTV News. “You’ll know whenever you begin to question how you look, or what you’re wearing, or what you’re doing”


Her foremost social media survival tip is stepping back and realizing that what you visualize on the world wide web isn’t routinely 100 percent accurate. “A lot of social media is curated, and it’s not real life,” she mentioned. “And so as soon as you begin believing that it is, that’s once you bump into issues.” So how does she, at such a young age, manage not to get caught up in a digital world that’s inundated with thirst traps and Instagram presets? “I do this thing where I’ll go through all my photographs and point out all of the good things that I love about my life,” she said.


And whenever she prioritizes staying grounded, focused, and motivated in her personalized life, she occasionally escapes to fictional worlds full of deceit, betrayal, and good, old-fashioned teen drama. Influence, which Buckingham co-wrote with Pretty Little Liars author Sara Shepard, is testament. The book will give fans a window in the world of social media superstardom, however with a murder mystery twist. “I’ve just lived in this whole insane influencer world for my whole life and I routinely think, why is there nothing written about this?” She mentioned. “It’s such an interesting world to build.”


Buckingham was inspired by Shepard’s earlier work — especially Pretty Little Liars. “The reason I love [Pretty Little Liars] so much is because you get to get sucked into the screen of those crazy, dramatic terrifying lies,” she mentioned. “I like knowing that there’s a centralized, good, moral reality in my real life, and then I’m allowed to vanish into the fantasy of those incredible, terrifying TV shows.” She also added that, despite PLL having a mysterious figure threatening everyone’s existence over text, “there were still the same underlying themes of my life, and bullying, and finding yourself as a teenager, and I wanted to continue telling those stories because they helped get me through a lot.”


The series of books from which the Freeform show was adapted made just as much of an impact. “Those were the initial books I fell in love with and made me aspire to be a writer,” she mentioned. “I loved getting to vanish into them, and I wanted have the ability to do that for other people.” She particularly loved that they centered four very strong female characters, which is something she attempted to emulate in Influence. “It’s told from four perspectives, and they’re all four different kinds of social media influencers,” Buckingham revealed. One character is a YouTube comedian who struggles with her mental health, another Buckingham described as “almost like a Disney star,” one believes that she’s the ideal and organizes her whole life into vlogs, and the last became prominent online by accident. “We visualize her rise to fame and why this murder investigation shows her downfalls,” she mentioned. “All of the characters intertwine and it’s just a super fun thriller. A lot of the stories are anecdotes from my life, so hopefully it feels authentic.”


For Buckingham, penning a fictional story about influencers is one of the most authentic ways she may give fans a window into her world while also sustaining some semblance of privacy in her real life. “It’s hard because any time you’ve grown up on social media and your followers are so used to seeing everything about your life, any time you’re not showing them everything about your life, they begin to prepare assumptions,” she mentioned. “That really terrified me, so for a long time I really was showing everything.” However Buckingham’s since learned a crucial lesson: “Sometimes it’s good to just keep things for yourself.”


Still, there really are some topics that Buckingham feels a responsibility to be open about, including her mental health and sex positivity. “I feel like there’s this regular misconception that influencers have brilliant lives,” she mentioned. “And I think it’s crucial for young kids to know they’re not alone and that the people they’re following are going by way of the exact same stuff that they are.” One of these things is cyberbullying. And believe it or not, deriving hate online is actually what inspired Buckingham to prepare Positively Social, a company that she built with dancers Maddie and Mackenzie Ziegler, whom she first met while performing at the MNR Dance Factory, to “help spread kindness and stop online bullying.”


“I’ve had this platform since I was 12,” Buckingham mentioned. “And First I didn’t really know what to do with it. It felt like I had all of those people watching and nothing crucial to say.” Positively Social changed that, allowing her to speak directly to other young people about the significance of being kind on the world wide web. Recently, the business paid visits to countless males and girls’ clubs around Los Angeles, beginning up the conversation to kids facing online bullying themselves. “I wanted to prepare a difference, and the reason Positively Social is so essential is [because] teens really do listen to other teens, because we’re all in the same boat. Whether you have 1,000 followers or a million followers, we’re all dealing with this relatively new created cyberspace.”


Although once you’re as widely followed as Buckingham, online hate is, to some extent, inevitable. And right after facing it head-on for several years, she’s come up with a couple of ways to assist her cope and understand why some people pick to spread negativity on the world wide web. “When I was a little younger, the hate comments took more of a toll on me because it felt like it was the entire world,” she explained. “I didn’t really have the mental capacity to accept that these people weren’t hating on me because they hated me. They were hating on me because they were having problems with themselves.”


While still a teenager herself, Buckingham has devoted her entire career so far to telling stories relevant to other people her age. Her several Brat TV series — including Crown Lake, Total Eclipse, and Chicken Girls — navigate ever-changing friendships, boy drama, and the ups and downs of high school. In Season 1 of Crown Lake, which Buckingham co-produced with Shepard, the show touched on “bullying and changing yourself to fit in.” In Season 2, the series shifted gears and showed one character’s tumultuous journey with her own sexuality. “We just did a lot of things kids can resonate with, and that’s why I think I’m drawn to these stories,” Buckingham mentioned. “I lived them and I'd like to help other people tell them.”


Influence is just one way Buckingham is continuing her mission to tell these stories. Nevertheless due to the coronavirus pandemic, fans are going to have to wait a little longer. Originally, the book was supposed to come out in June, although COVID-19 has since impacted the release date, delaying it up until January 2021. In the meantime, Buckingham is applying this time to crack down on her statistics and plan for college. “I got into a screenwriting class at the University of Southern California, so I get to begin taking that,” she mentioned, adding that she’s excited to write more coming-of-age stories. “And some college stuff. I keep forgetting that I’m also a real-life student who has to apply to college, so among all of the social media stuff, I’m attempting to pass my classes and study for the AP exams.” How does she do it all, you ask? It’s simple: “It’s not bad once you love what you’re doing.”