That's false for several reasons. First, government debt impacts citizens directly through higher taxes (income, property, sales, and others), fees, deprivation of services, ect. Second, government debt is not primarily owed back to it's citizens. The biggest holder of government debt is the Federal Reserve, which is a collection of private banks. The vast majority of debt not held by the federal reserve is held by banks, financiers, and the ultra-wealthy. Third, working people and those on fixed incomes are crushed by ZIRP (zero interest rate policy), which has been implemented by the FED in an effort to prevent the mountains of debt load on every governmental level from exploding. What it has done instead is prevented people from saving (since artificially low interest rates that don't match the rise in cost of living mean treasuries and savings accounts lose value) and further inflate the riches of the ultra-wealthy who borrow at 0% and buy stocks.
This doesn't even touch on the fact that millions of people who have worked their whole lives for pensions are about to get the shaft and become destitute when states and municipalities are overcome by their crushing debt and default on their payments.
Pretty much the whole world economy is built on debt and creating more of it, that's because there is no such thing as "money" without debt, especially not with the US$ as the de-facto world currency.
In that regard, it's disingenuous to claim the whole problem only boils down to a couple of kids living above their standards, it's way more systemic than that.
