Lightly brushing the tongue may be better than scraping it, as excessive force with steel scrapers can damage the tongue tissue.

“what was interesting is that several of them pointed out that lightly brushing the tongue may in fact be better than scraping the tongue because they argue that especially when people use those steel tongue scrapers that few people know how to use them with sufficient Force to remove the bacteria but not so much force that they don't damage the tongue tissue and the tongue is a very fragile soft tissue”