In a recent survey, majority of the respondents felt that it was wrong to extend credit lines to teens below the age of 18. The new credit card laws have taken it a step further by mandating that no one under the age of 21 will be able to get a credit card without showing either a proof of income or having a co-signer on the card. This doesn’t necessarily mean that young card holders are more likely to get into credit card debt than older card holders. The rule has more to do with unnecessarily exposing teens to a product that doesn’t give them a lot of benefits; In fact until recently credit cards spent heavily and tried a lot to get students to open credit card accounts.
One of the arguments against the rule is that the card helps young people to build a credit history, the opposing argument however that not a lot of 17 year olds really understand what a credit score is remains equally strong. In fact, in recent times, the financial literacy of students in high school has fallen to an all-time low touching 48.3 percent. This was realized when a lot of students answered credit card related questions incorrectly.
In fact, adults who received cards at age 19 or 20 had massively abused them so It wasn’t strange to find students with card debts in thousands of dollars by the time they graduated from college.
