Consumers in their teens and 20s have younger credit reports and fewer accounts. This means that they'll likely be scored in a "thin file" or "young file" scorecard.

What this means is even modest balances will have more of an impact than the same balance belonging to a consumer who has a much older or robust credit history. This is because of the principle of revolving utilization as well as the weight given in credit scoring to the age of a consumer's credit file.

Learn about the five criteria which are evaluated to calculate your credit scores.