Updating project dependencies is very easy with npm; there's no need to fiddle with the package.json content manually all the time.
You can use npm update to install the available updates, and npm outdated to get a list of packages that need to be updated.
Of course, you can still edit the package.json file manually if you prefer.
Some IDEs such as IntelliJ will provide autocompletion for the package names and package versions when editing the file.
For more information, have a look at the following links: