A majority of countries in Central and Eastern Europe joined the European Union (EU) in 2004. One of the key objectives of the membership was to achieve economic, social and development convergence. In practice, however, the region has become a cheap production center for Western European companies. This can be proved by the very slow convergence even for typical macro indicators like GDP per capita, and as for socioeconomic indicators, the countries of the region are far behind the Western European countries. The reason is the low value-added, low productivity economic structure which is the consequence of the dominance of the Western European assembly-type investments in the region. Due to this dominance, a great proportion of locally produced GDP leaves the region in the form of repatriated profit. Lack of enough resources is impeding the necessary investments in human capital development, like education, healthcare and local Research and Development (R&D). Low level of human development consequently holds back productivity improvement and general economic development, as statistical indicators prove it. With low level of human development, however, the countries of the region will not be capable of actively participating in the rapid and unpredictable environmental changes. There is a great chance that the region will be trapped in a peripheral position, or in other words, it will get into a development trap. This paper examines a few important development indicators of the four Visegrad countries from Central Europe: Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The study compares their development indicators with those of a few Western European developed countries, and highlights correlation among competitiveness, innovation, productivity and human resource indicators to prove that low level of human capital and knowledge investments, i.e., intangible investments, will push these countries into a development trap, with low level of living standards, wellbeing and life expectancy compared to the developed countries. This path, at the same time, underscores that a majority of these countries will never catch up with the developed ones. Moving to a different development path would require change in economic policies. Rather than inviting even more assembly type operations, intensive investments in knowledge is the need of the hour to increase innovation capacity and productivity throughout the economy and society.

As the academic performance of adolescent students in Nigeria continues to deteriorate, researchers are worried as to how the Internet use habits contribute to their emotional and behavioral development and how it affects them. The paper investigates the prevalence of Internet addiction disorder among adolescent students in Calabar, Nigeria, and how it relates to their school performance. A questionnaire-based survey method was employed to gather data from a random, nationally-representative sample of adolescents (males and females) during the period November 1 to December 3, 2021. Young's 20-item Internet Addiction Test (YIAT) was applied to assess the prevalence of Internet addiction. The self-reported research data was evaluated by quantitative means to associate it with poor school performance among the study population. The outcome of the study confirmed the prevalence of Internet addiction and its association with poor school performance in the source population. This study obviously has implications for parents, guardians and policymakers, both in the educational and economic sectors of Nigeria.