Hardly a week goes by without some survey or other pointing to a growing number of mortgage, loan and credit card applications being turned down, as lenders tighten their criteria in the credit crunch.

You can imagine my surprise, then, to receive a letter from my credit card provider telling me that I’ve, somehow, qualified for an increase in my credit limit — a limit that has never been anywhere near reached.

It was all the more interesting to subsequently learn that I am not alone in this flipside to the credit tale. While one in eight card holders have had their credit limits cut, one set of borrowers are being handed increases, according to data from personal finance site Fool.co.uk.

Young people — those aged between 18 and 25 (an age-group that I fell into just a few years ago) — are three times more likely to have their credit-card limits increased. Some 14 percent of them have been given additional facilities by their credit card providers in recent months. Around 20 percent say their spending limits have been upped by a fifth, while 41 percent say providers have boosted their plastic power by up to 50 percent.

In contrast, customers aged between 34 and 49 have been hit the hardest, the poll of 1,341 people shows. One in six people in this age group say their credit limits have been hacked back, as do one in seven people in their early 50s.

Handing greater spending power to younger consumers at a time when greater financial discipline is paramount (amidst rising borrowing costs, soaring food and fuel prices and a widespread economic slowdown) is hardly prudent.

As lenders pull down the shutters for some customers and hold the door open wide for others, consumers are warned against getting their fingers trapped in the credit crunch: what banks give with one hand they can easily take away with the other.