Eye experts are worried that this dangerous fad is gaining popularity with preteens, especially after news reports of elementary school students in Japan who dared to test their ocular boundaries and caused multiple cases of pinkeye.

In one classroom of 12-year-olds, one third of students confessed to "worming" or being "wormed." Officials only noticed something was up when some of the licked students showed up to school wearing eyepatches. [...]

"I got some weird offshoot of TB in my eye once. I ended up with corneal ulcers and I spent like a month in the hospital," she said. "Nobody really knows why. Well, I got over it, and I'm fine now. That was like six years ago.

"I'm just safer now, I guess ... Live and learn. I mean they don't really make tongue rubbers, but maybe they should."