When Will Troops Learn Lesson from Social Media Scandals?

American Soldiers and Marines tote high-powered carbines, machine guns and explosives. But many also carry another piece of gear that can be just as dangerous: the camera, which in the hands of Generation YouTube has become a weapon in its own right – one that often backfires.

"This is a generation that not only feels the need to record everything, but to share everything," said Matt Gallagher, an Iraq War vet, author and senior fellow at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

In the last two weeks alone, videos have surfaced of Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters and of Soldiers laughing as someone in their group beats a goat with a metal pipe. The Marine video was cited this weekend as a reason an Afghan Soldier turned his gun on four French troops, Agence France-Presse reported.

Two years ago, a video of a Marine tossing a puppy off a cliff went viral, resulting in that Marine and the one who recorded it being booted from the Corps.

And then there are the still images. Think Abu Ghraib, when Soldiers photographed their abuses of Iraqi prisoners. Or, more recently, airmen at Lackland AFB, Texas, posing around a casket in which one of them pretends to be a corpse.

What troops might think is funny and personal at the time can become explosive once it finds its way online. Then it goes viral, rapidly shared and viewed by millions around the world and perhaps giving the impression that the bizarre, the cruel and the insensitive are actually the norm for U.S forces.

"These are anomalies," says Gallagher, a former Army captain who served 15 months in Iraq with the 25th Infantry Division as a cavalry scout platoon leader and targeting officer. "The reason they catch fire is because they are graphic, they are disgusting. But 10 years of war, and [there are] only four or five examples."

Still, when it comes to damaging images, a little goes a long way. And even more basically, they raise questions among viewers about why anyone who'd captured potentially incriminating material would then put it online for anyone to see.

Former Marine John Hoellwarth, who teaches public affairs at the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Md., believes many troops remain naïve about social media and do not understand its power.

Many have been using it longer than they've served, said Hoellwarth, who served as a public affairs official in Iraq and was a reporter for Leatherneck magazine and Marine Corps Times.

"Because these people have been sharing the mundane details of their lives on the Internet for so long, and because they've never experienced themselves as the focal point for global attention, they have a diminished perception of [its power], or that possibly they could be the source" of worldwide controversy, he said.

"I teach my students about the power of social media, I tell them to brief their people about social media, but some people don't internalize it. They don't get the word out," he said.

The rule is not to put anything online you wouldn't want revealed in a formation, says Hoellwarth.

"But the first time someone drops the 'F'-bomb on their page, and no one says anything, or writes that they think Kim Kardashian is hot, and there's no [negative] response, over time there's a diminished sense of the potential power of what you're saying, or that what you're saying will have any consequences."

This leads many troops to conclude that what they put online doesn't have any consequences, Hoellwarth said.

"As much as we focused on the negative implications of social media, it also works in the other direction as well," he said. "You want your people to have cell phones and to be posting stuff on Facebook when they're handing out soccer balls to kids."

Hoellwarth said he believed that the most widely viewed military images and videos online are those posted by troops, not by the services or the Defense Department. So banning phones and cameras from the field is not an option, he says; social media is too valuable a tool.

Gallagher, of IAVA, agreed. The services need to have cameras in the field to document what's happening there, he argued, but leaders on the ground also need to remember they're around.

 "You see in all these cases, from Abu Ghraib to these latest videos, both commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers are not doing their jobs," he said. "And when those leaders are not doing their jobs … or not watching over the men and women the way they're supposed to, as they're charged with, there's a domino effect."

"And some really stupid decisions have been made," he said.