I hear that a lot but, how bad is it really? Does it affect you (if you use Debian)? Aren't there ways to install newer versions of most things that actually matter?
Debian 13 has 69% of packages up to date:
https://repology.org/repositories/statistics
Years ago I used Mint and was annoyed by the outdated packages, so I used the nix package manager. But after a few Months I switched completely to nixos.