Debt is at best a red herring, an individual with a $30k mortgage on a $60k home is not in the same situation as an individual with $30k in the bank and $30k of credit card debt yet they both have $30k in debt.
If you have a 30k mortgage on a 60k home by selling all your assets you're 30k up, whereas the other scenario has you at zero. Net worth would arrive to the same conclusion, so I don't see net worth including wealth to be a bad metric here.
That's really not what red herring means.
The problem with debt is that is complicated, not that it doesn't matter.