.....

In general, they don't, no.

Only textbooks and children's books have severely limited kanji. Fiction books for teenagers don't, literature doesn't, histories and encyclopedias don't, manga doesn't. Some of them may have furigana to varying extents. By this time, a native speaker will have read thousands of pages full of kanji well beyond the grade list.

Japanese television also is thick with kanji being splashed on the screen to tell you what's being said, in variety shows, game shows, and the news.

There's -constant- exposure to which kanji go with which word. (Remember this is not learning 'how to pronounce the kanji' - these are natives, they already know the word to hear it and speak it, it's just putting the written form to an already known word.)

And, of course, if you live in a house with Japanese parents with a newspaper subscription and you run across an unfamiliar word while you're reading the newspaper... you can just ask.

If you live in a house that doesn't have a newspaper subscription, then if you read the paper at all it's probably online - in which case you have a plethora of tools to look words up.

And of course, if worst comes to worst ... you can always enter the kanji into your 電子辞書, or your 携帯 if you use an app.

Most of time, they will not have trouble reading. That is because they were taught the most common Kanji during elementary school, which is first through sixth grade. These kanji, called kyouiku kanji, cover about 95% of the kanji that will read in a newspaper. In short, they will know a majority of the kanji that they came across.

[Zgarbas]

I also thought about this a while back and asked my friends, and they say that they can recognise them, or if they don't they can just whip out their dictionary/ask someone... I think that 99% of the ones they might have a problem with are names*, and the rest are odd words. Like the other posters said, everyone already knows the kanjis since it's their own language, even if they've never written it down in class.

*even after finishing 12th grade because Japanese names makes no sense sometimes.

I imagine whatever age you would consider kids reading newspapers in English would also be the same for Japanese. There's easily the same amount of stuff to memorize and become familiar with considering all the strange spellings and exceptions in English.

There is a lot of non-kanji knowledge required to read a newspaper, but by the time they hit jr. high school most well educated kids will be able to get through newspaper articles. The ability to comprehend them will be limited only by their overall education and generally not by their Japanese ability.

For grade school kids there are special shogakusei editions of newspapers which feature shorter articles and furigana.

Before the internet there were also weekly books like 子どものニュースウイークリー andNHK also had a show called 週刊こどもニュース.

Like everything internet resources like NHK News Web Easy are probably the primary thing used now.

[s0apgun]

JHS kids in Japan can read novels and manga without furigana by that point. I don't see them having any problems reading the newspaper. They will know 90% of the words... just like if you were to read the business section of the newspaper now.

In Tamiou, this was the source of countless (to me) hilarious and (to me) thought-provoking moments where the 馬鹿息子, idiot son, asks for clarification of a word he doesn't know, with one, two, sometimes three back-and-forths of escalating confusion. The writing and camerawork killed me when the mom did it. I'd love to watch the show again when I'm better at Japanese