Using JObject and JProperty with JSON.Net 4.0

There are many ways you can do that, and what you have is fine. A few other alternatives are shown below:

• Get the first element of the array, instead of all the children

• Use SelectToken to go to the first array element with a single call

      string json = @"{
        ""data"": [
          {
            ""installed"": 1,
            ""user_likes"": 1,
            ""user_education_history"": 1,
            ""friends_education_history"": 1,
            ""bookmarked"": 1
          }
        ]
      }";
  
      JObject j = JObject.Parse(json);
  
      // Directly traversing the graph
      var lst = j["data"][0].Select(jp => ((JProperty)jp).Name).ToList();
      Console.WriteLine(string.Join("--", lst));
  
      // Using SelectToken
      lst = j.SelectToken("data[0]").Children<JProperty>().Select(p => p.Name).ToList();
      Console.WriteLine(string.Join("--", lst));