Virtual Congregation: Intensity of Watching YouTube on Religious Understanding during Covid-19 Ridho Syabibi 1 , Ihsan Rahmat 2 , Rini Fitria 3 , Armin Tedy 4 , Harum Soniago 5 {ridhosyabibi@iainbengkulu.ac.id 1 , ihsanrahmat@iainbengkulu.ac.id 2 , rinifitria13@yahoo.co.id 3 , armin@iainbengkulu.ac.id 4 , harumsoniago6@gmail.com 5 } UIN Fatmawati Sukarno Bengkulu, Raden Fattah Street, Bengkulu, Indonesia Abstract. Social media is not only a means of entertainment but also an increase in religious knowledge. The phenomenon of staying at home, working from home, and lockdown as a direct impact of Covid-19 has given a lot of free time to surf in cyberspace. This paper hypothesized that the intensity of watching YouTube during the Covid-19 period affected students' religious understanding with an Islamic education background. The test was conducted on 42 students living in the State Islamic University of Fatmawati Sukarno Bengkulu dormitory. There is a positive influence between the variable intensity of YouTube users on religious understanding with a significance of 0.001. The value of R Square (R) of the two research variables that have been tested is 0.232. Thus, the variable intensity of YouTube users affects the variable of religious understanding by 23.2%, while other variables outside this study influence the remaining 76.8%. In the future, it is necessary to test the influence of similar platforms that are more attractive to millennials in the future. Keywords: Religious understanding; YouTube; Social media; Covid-19 1 Introduction The Covid-19 pandemic has changed various regular human habits in almost all countries in the world. The practice of the gathering must wear a mask [1], online learning [2], go outside the area preceded by a clinical test [3] until the ban on open worship [4] has become evident. From now onwards, the atmosphere of quarantine, lockdown, and stay at home has become a new habit of controlling disease [5]. People spend 24 hours at home, then only travel outside for something urgent. This locking option is a first for many. So there are psychological effects such as depression and acute boredom caused by anxiety and fear [1], [6]. Yan et al. found boredom susceptibility significantly and positively mediate the relationship between perceived stress and emotional distress. Various attempts have been made to kill boredom: spending time on social networks [7], [8]. The acceleration of internet use with religion, in general, has been of interest to academics for a long time. Previous studies seem to focus on three areas. First, early studies predict the influence of the internet on religion [9], [10]. Turkle said that the internet would influence a person's spirituality, and there are many changes in it. More specifically, Kinney predicts the end of an era of religious leaders when the internet is inseparable from the congregation. Second, Islamic movements and religious leaders use the internet as a medium of da'wah [11], [12]. Third, there is a quantitative test of the impact of the internet on a person's religiosity [13], [14], BIC 2021, October 11-12, Batusangkar, Indonesia Copyright © 2022 EAI DOI 10.4108/eai.11-10-2021.2319483