That's the advantage of gaining practical experience that we can teach others what not do. Learning from others' mistakes is a skill that not everyone can achieve.
I second your thoughts, and I believe that if many of us had joined the network earlier than we did, we prolly would have lost our funds to scammers, and we may have had the sort of knowledge at our disposal at the moment. Newcomers in the network need to understand that accumulating crypto is important, but what's most important is keeping it safe, that is, not losing it to scammers, and one can only do that through garnering sufficient knowledge.
Thus it really doesn't matter if you feel you're late or not, if at the time you get on the crypto train, you make it a necessity to build your crypto knowledge and build yourself up, then you've achieved a lot more than people who came earlier than you, but with lesser knowledge.