I've been using bitcoin for three years now, and following it before then.
Is this the real thing?
Today I got a check in the mail for $30k from my credit union, the proceeds from selling a fairly large portion of my bitcoin holdings. It doesn't get more real than that.
Should I treat it as more of an investment or will it actually be useful to my everyday life?
Bitcoin was designed with certain properties that make it very similar to gold and other precious metals. If you understand why gold is valuable (few do) then you will understand why bitcoin is valuable. Based on its use as an investment we can expect the price per bitcoin to reach somewhere between $10k to $100k. I believe that this will happen over the next 20 years. However I think that the price will actually be higher, because of its non-investment uses.
Useful in your everyday life? Some people are finding it useful in their everyday lives. I haven't really had that experience yet. However, as time goes on more and more infrastructure will be built, making bitcoin more and more useful.
If bitcoin starts to become widely used then the price per bitcoin may climb into the millions. If this happens it won't be for a long time, at least a couple of generations. Maybe it will happen before I die, maybe it won't.
What would cause Bitcoin to lose much of its value? Can governments actually stop it/regulate it?
Government hostility would suppress its value. A currency is less valuable if you can't use it without risking prison. Can it be shut down? That is debatable and kind of a big topic that would be hard to explain to a newbie. I feel confident enough in bitcoin that I am keeping the majority of my wealth in bitcoin.
What's the best way for me to understand the concept?
Figure out why gold is valuable (hint: fungibility, scarcity, and convenience). Then imagine that you could send gold over the internet (very convenient!).
I'm a soon to be college graduate with about 15k in debt that I need to pay off (should be able to do it within a year), should I stay away from Bitcoin for now?
I think that bitcoin won't perform well this year, so if you wait a while you'll probably still be able to get coins fairly cheaply, before we start to hit the $2000+ prices.
That said, the easiest way to get out of debt is to buy $1000 worth of bitcoins and wait a couple of years.
Also, how secure is it if someone tried to steal my money?
That's entirely up to you. I keep my bitcoins in cold storage using 2 of 4 paper wallets distributed throughout the country. The only way that I can lose my coins is if the site custodians collude against me. I used to have much lower security but no one stole my coins then.