Thank you. That makes sense.
The reason I was doing it this way is because I was thinking about adding other types of roles later on that have other permissions. For instance, an editor or an author. I was hoping to make a UI that would allow an admin to change permissions of each role on a webpage instead of directly altering the data in the app data.
I was hoping to learn how to do that, but maybe I need to take baby steps and use your suggestion for now.