Someone told me once that eyeballs at birth are pretty much as big as they will be for the rest of your life. Having a six month old daughter, it got me curious again if it was true. Is it?
I’ve seen this question asked somewhere before. Here it is:
Your eyeballs never grow?
Eyes don’t grow
They’re occasionally bigger than your stomach.
Hmmm, when exactly does bony growth stop?
I thought that the reason my eyesight kept getting worse (I’m near-sighted) was because my eyes were still growing. Hence the distance formt he focus point to the retina was increasing.
Am I wrong?
And with a Mercotan answer, its settled 
I seem to remember something about eyeball growth now that its mentioned with regards myopia in Physics classes at school.
No, you’re not wrong. Here’s the weird thing, though: nearsightedness, although having an obvious genetic component (I’m nearsighted, as is my dad, sister, and brother), is heavily influenced by environment. Western culture, with it’s heavy emphasis on reading and other tasks that are done at reading-distance, causes the shape of the eye to develop in such a way that nearsightedness is more likely. How do they know this? Because primitive cultures that are much less “close up” oriented are much less likely to be nearsightedness. What’s that, you say? Those cultures hunt a lot, and hunters have to see well at a distance, so nearsighted genes would be at a severe disadvantage. Therefore, it’s all genetic. Not so. When primitive cultures are rapidly integrated into modern western society (as periodically is done by some do-gooder), they become nearsighted at about the rate as westerners within a single generation.