I mean, think of it this way: it comes down to how often you come across words in any language including English (even in ENG: you may forget how to spell words correctly if you don’t use or encounter them often), kind of the same logic with Kanji: a Japanese person doesn’t know all Kanji in the same way English speakers doesn’t know every single word that exists in ENG.
There are over 5000 Kanji but only about half of that is used in Japanese or closer to 2136 while the remainder consist of ones only present within technical jargon (medicine, science, politics, etc.). or certain Kanji only has limited uses in some words (but mostly written in kana). That is also accounting for grammar being “straight forward” more than English or Euro languages.
The “real” hard part is numerous readings (depending whether it’s paired with kana or another kanji, reflected from kunyomi & onyomi plus nanori when applied in people’s names). What I hate about most online translators is that it often gets lost in translation (like words used in the wrong context but on their own it’s correct, however not right for the situation or topic at hand).
Kanji aren’t really hard, there’s just a lot of them. And I can’t learn that many at a time. So it takes ages to get to the point where you can actually read stuff, just in terms of volume. At least with my limits.
That said, one issue I’m noticing is that kanji with the default internet fonts are usually too small for me to make out the differences in the more complex ones. I often need to increase the font a bit with a userstyle to actually make stuff readable.
Just don’t learn all the readings from the start. When the kanji is used alone as a word directly, there’s just one reading used for it. Other than that, you’re dealing with vocabulary.
We learn “2” as reading “two”, not “twe”, despite that reading being used in “twenty” and “twelve”. We learn the latter two as separate vocabulary words that simply include the “2” character. The same should be applied to kanji. Learn one word for the kanji, and the rest through vocabulary that uses the kanji.
Wanikani iirc takes this approach where they usually teach you the primary onyomi with the kanji, so you can read most vocabulary words right away, while only having to learn one reading. All of ther other readings are taught through vocabulary items indirectly.