For the average five-year-old:
It's a way to tell computers what to do, even if they're very far away.
For the super genius five-year-old who somehow knows a lot about computers:
It's a protocol for securely connecting to a command line shell (think CMD) on a computer over a network (LAN/Internet/...). You need a server program running on the remote and a client program on your local device. You authenticate with your remote username and either your password or (preferably) your private key (a topic for another ELI5) and are greeted by the same command-line interface as if you were sitting in front of the computer with a keyboard and monitor plugged into it.
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For the average five-year-old:
It's a way to tell computers what to do, even if they're very far away.
For the super genius five-year-old who somehow knows a lot about computers:
It's a protocol for securely connecting to a command line shell (think CMD) on a computer over a network (LAN/Internet/...). You need a server program running on the remote and a client program on your local device. You authenticate with your remote username and either your password or (preferably) your private key (a topic for another ELI5) and are greeted by the same command-line interface as if you were sitting in front of the computer with a keyboard and monitor plugged into it.