You can play and enjoy the game at any age, and that's a good thing!
There's certainly advantages to starting as young as possible though. This is true with anything.
1) It's generally easier to learn new concepts when we are younger
2) In terms of total experience, it's better to be a 40 year-old who started playing when they were 20 than it is to be a 40 year-old who started playing when they were 35. That's an extra 15 years of playing and studying time which is an advantage. There's no guarantee that someone who has played for 20 years is better than someone who has played for 5. It depends on the individual, their natural capacity to understand the game, how seriously they took things, how many hours they actually play or study etc. If everything was equal though, more experience is better.
Will you be a better player in 1 year than you are now, how about in 5 years? You should be and so should I because we played an extra 5 years.