Yes, having started late will help you. The reason is that our brains keep developing until we hit around 25, and especially at younger ages, our brains will rewire very easily. It means porn makes a bigger mess because it can work its way in so much more easily. Think of it like trying to untie a knot. The knot you have to untie is going to be smaller and less tightly pulled than a knot of a guy the same age who started at 14.
I don't think being a virgin will affect your reboot one way or another. Though, I might know where you're getting that idea from reading other threads. Many guys focus on replacing porn with real sex experiences in order to push out the porn drive. I think this is right minded in the sense that porn =/= sex, but it is a double edged sword. I've seen so many guys seek sexual encounters basically to live out their porn desires, whether they realize it or not, and that just makes it a whole lot more messy. I personally think it is better to go into "monk mode" and let sexual tastes and urges reorient to "real life" on their own. I think you have to do more than put clean water in the cup, you have to clean out the sludge first or else you just get watered down sludge. On the subject of porn =/= sex, I don't think having any kind of sex life in parallel to porn means that you can get a better grip of what sex is, since "sex" can be whatever you and a (hopefully) willing partner decide. Whenever I read the sex columns in my local weekly, it always makes me think that maybe porn and sexual dysfunction are just two snakes eating each others's tails, but that's a whole different matter. I think this could only apply to someone who was an adult, perhaps married, prior to discovering porn. Sometimes that is the case when we read threads of guys in their 40s or 50s (or older) who didn't find porn until after they had kids and the internet came around. Then, they have memories and mental impressions that exist as touchstones to show what sex is that porn isn't, but that doesn't apply to most of us.
My own experience was that I started in my teens, but with dial up on a family computer, so I didn't have privacy with a computer and high speed until my early 20s, and didn't have speeds capable of streaming video until my late 20s. I'm 37 now. Very, very limited sexual experience, by choice. My parents didn't even really insist on it, it was my call to live out this way and by my religious ideals. It is how I prefer it, and almost every woman I've dated would prefer it that way as well. It hasn't been a "struggle" where I've had to fight with myself on that, nor do I think sexual repression was ever an issue for me. I can elaborate if you think it might be helpful or interesting. Quitting took a long time (years), but once I got a good game plan I had about 10 months of good streaks before quitting for good. The white-knuckle day to day stuff was about 90-100 days into my final "streak", which lasts to this day. There are still occasional flashbacks and haunts, but it is more a long game now where I don't think about it often at all. I'm not sure on the timeline for other things (physical changes, changes in sexual tastes, etc.) but I'd roughly put it around the 6-9 month mark where I felt myself normalize. My perception is that for many who started younger with harder and faster stuff, that white knuckle day-to-day phase that is highly prone to relapse lasts a lot longer.
