Is the US debt truly different this time? Or it just isn’t?

Cue 2011 and see a much younger version of me obsessed about the US debt. I was spending hours in my college dorm reading articles about the nearing consequences of the growing US debt and an upcoming lost decade, I was showing everybody in class the debt clock, etc.

Then time went by and nothing like that happened.

I got busy with other stuff, but I remember that if I searched the topic (which I did sporadically), there would always be articles no more than a few days or weeks old warning about the debt. But the 2010s came and went, and we are more than halfway through the 2020s and still nothing noticeable has happened (If anything, the US economy outgrew other developed economies). Yet, I’m seeing again a renewed interest and warnings on the debt, and I’m just wondering if this time it truly “is different” or if the 2020s will pass again and nothing major will change.

Why is the debt difference this time? Or why it isn’t? And if we were certain it’s different, why can’t we (or the markets) predict when the consequences will show up in the everyday economy?