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ETF-s are exchange traded funds, which is basically a basket of stocks, usually trying to follow an index, but not always.
An Index is what you mentioned, S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 are indexes, consisting of certain companies, S&P 500 is best 500 US companies by market cap, Nasdaq 100 is tech heavy, but same thing, top 100 non-financial companies on Nasdaq exhange. An Index basically follows these companies, if the companies perform better, the index performs better, and vice versa. Lower risk, since if one company out of the 500 or 100 flies off into the sunset, another just replaces it. Lower risk in contrast to buying individual company shares, I mean, since if you put all your money in Coca Cola and next day they release the secret recipe to crabby patty, you're screwed. But if you had it in the index, Coca Cola disappears, it drops the index by like 1-2 percent, and then another company appears to take it's place and all is well(percentages and example is completely fictional).
An Index Fund is a stock that follows a certain index, it can be an ETF, like the ones you mentioned, the VOO and QQQ are both ETF-s, basically VOO follows S&P 500, QQQ follows Nasdaq.
You can't "invest" in S&P 500 or Nasdaq directly, but you can buy ETF-s that follow these indexes, which is the best choice for 99% of people anyway.
No need to read graphs all day long, you just have to DCA VOO, DCA means dollar cost averaging, which is basically "always and continuously buy it for whatever it costs", do that for 20 years, put money into it each month regardless if its down or up, you may buy the dips if you please.
From what I heard and read, Nasdaq is more volatile since it's more tech heavy, meaning it has more risk, it's either a lot better in good times than S&P500, or a lot worse during bad times. S&P 500 also has tech by the way, so there is quite a large overlap between the two, better to just buy one of them and if you want to diversify, look for one more index that's outside the US, and put some lower percentage into that just in case, see VEU for example, but you can look at all time graphs, Mr. World doesn't seem to do too good without that big daddy. Or alternatively, you could buy some precious metals, or keep your money in cash in a more stable currency.
The best thing you can do right now in my humble opinion, is first of all get atleast 3(preferably 6) months of your salary as a emergency fund for whatever happens, and then start to play around with your money.
If you want to invest in S&P 500, buy an index fund ETF that follows that, it's that simple, and then continously keep pumping money into it whenever you can, if you can set monthly automatic investing, that's even better, it just sucks the money off your card, you barely even notice it. All the little nuances of your specific brokerage, that comes down to you to figure out, how the website works and whatnot.
If you don't have too much money, don't diversify yet, won't do you too much good, just buy one index fund and pump everything into that, that's already hundreds of companies your investing in, the ETF itself is diversified.
It's also good to check out what stock exchange your specific etf is listed on, since I'm in Europe and using IBKR, and for me, there is 3 or 4 different versions of the same ETF under the same name, say VOO is listed on the amsterdam stock exhange, London Stock exchange, spanish exchange.. All of them are named VOO except at the end, there's these designations like LSE, AS, which are designations for the stock exchanges they are listed on, and that could affect what the currency is that you buy them in. So if you have USD, preferably you should buy ones that are listed in USD, but I have no idea how diversified it is in the US, in Europe there is euros, dollars, pounds, swiss franc, multiple currencies, and one should look out for exchange rates.
Take all this with a grain of salt, I myself also only started investing a couple of months ago, but this wall of information is what I feel like I researched the most for.
Never forget,stick to the basics, keep it simple, don't bet against the US, and time in the market beats timing the market.

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