Another widely held theory for the myopia epidemic is that the invention of corrective lenses effectively eliminated any evolutionary advantage in having decent eyesight, and coincidently, improperly shaped eyeballs are a tremendously dominant trait. Or in layman's terms, good eyesight is a particularly fragile aspect of the human genetic code. Thus, even in the short period of time involved, having made myopia a non-terminal, life-destroying condition has allowed it to proliferate naturally, effectively reversing genetic evolution.

For the quick to criticize, corrective lenses have been around for a (relatively) considerable amount of time. Anecdotally, the Roman tragedian Seneca, born in about 4 BC, is alleged to have read "all the books in Rome" by peering at them through a glass globe of water to produce magnification. Ground glass "Reading stones" (aka maginfying glasses) date back to roughly 1000 CE. The first recorded use of ground-lense eyewear seems to date to the latter half of the 13th century.