If I need something bleeding edge it's straightforward to just download the source from wherever and install it myself with stow in /usr/local, which makes it easy to remove/upgrade if needed. I anyways do pretty much everything in VMs, so package availability for my "base" system (which I mostly use only to run VMs) is not that big of a deal. If I need bleeding edge I can always spin up an arch linux VM...
Ironically, the "dist-upgrade" must be explicitly called on the command line, but is the default setting in Synaptic (called "smart upgrade" there). Synaptic is a GUI package manager most newbies would probably use in place of the command line, so I would expect its default settings to be more on the safe side.
Does what you do with your computer matter? Then you probably want to consider doing it on a stable platform.
Do you want to experiment? Sure thing, have fun — but be aware that you may lose data as a result.
Debian stable has been an excellent platform for me for the better part of a decade. But I'm unafraid to install newer version of some software where appropriate (e.g. emacs, or graphics drivers).