Soap opera rapid aging syndrome

SORAS or Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome is a fan term for when an infant or young child in a soap opera is aged very quickly by the writers. This is done to permit an older actor to portray the character, and to involve the character in different - usually more "adult" - storylines.

In the early days of the soap opera, it was not uncommon to age a character right into his or her twenties; for example, this happened to the character of Tom Hughes on As the World Turns in the late 1960s. One day he was a preteen, and the next he was shipped off to Vietnam. However, in the past few decades as soap producers have introduced more and more teenagers into soaps in order to attract the lucrative teen audience, it is now common practice to only age a character into the mid teens, with 15 and 16 being the most common ages that a character will be "SORASed" to. Eight-year-old Sami Brady on Days of Our Lives was aged to a fifteen-year-old when she was reintroduced in early 1993.

Some child characters literally mature faster than others. For example, Billy Abbott on The Young and the Restless was born on the show in 1993, yet was 16 years old by 1999, while his niece Colleen Carlton (born 1991) was only 14 years old in 2001, meaning that Billy had changed from being two years younger than his niece to being four years older.

SORAS is almost unheard of on British or Australian soaps, where the added degree of realism allows babies born on the show to age in real time (although Ian Beale played by Adam Woodyatt on British Soap EastEnders gained an extra year. His original birth year bas 1970 and celebrated his 18th Birthday in 1988, but this was changed to 1969 and he celebrated his 21st in 1990). One of the few American soap children allowed to age in real time was Patti Barron Tate on Search for Tomorrow, first played from 1951 to 1961 by Lynn Loring. Her character did not have any jumps in age from the first episode until the last (in 1986).

A similar fan term, de-SORAS, occurs when writers make a character younger. One character that has been "de-SORASed" is Erica Kane on All My Children. When the show debuted in 1970, Erica's date of birth was 1954. In 1993, it was changed to 1956. And in 2002, the year was changed again to 1962.