php - What's a better way to make this insert more secure and safe from injection and manipulation

Solution:

As the comments above suggest, it's worth using query parameters to protect yourself from SQL injection.

You asked for an example of how anything malicious could be done. In fact, it doesn't even need to be malicious. Any innocent string that legitimately contains an apostrophe could break your SQL query. Malicious SQL injection takes advantage of that weakness.

The weakness is fixed by keeping dynamic values separate from your SQL query until after the query is parsed. We use query parameter placeholders in the SQL string, then useprepare() to parse it, and after that combine the values when youexecute() the prepared query. That way it remains safe.

Here's how I would write your function. I'm assuming using PDO which supports named query parameters. I recommend using PDO instead of Mysqli.

function updateProfile( $vars, $userId ) {
    $db = new Database();
    $safeArray = [
        "gradYear",
        "emailAddress",
        "token",
        "iosToken",
        "country",
        "birthYear",
        "userDescription",
    ];
    // Filter $vars to include only keys that exist in $safeArray.
    $data = array_intersect_keys($vars, array_flip($safeArray));

    // This might result in an empty array if none of the $vars keys were valid.
    if (count($data) == 0) {
        trigger_error("Error: no valid columns named in: ".print_r($vars, true));
        $response = ["response" => 400, "title" => "no valid fields found"];
        return $response;
    }
    
    // Build list of update assignments for SET clause using query parameters.
    // Remember to use back-ticks around column names, in case one conflicts with an SQL reserved keyword.
    $updateAssignments = array_map(function($column) { return "`$column` = :$column"; }, array_keys($data));
    $updateString = implode(",", $updateAssignments);

    // Add parameter for WHERE clause to $data. 
    // This must be added after $data is used to build the update assignments.
    $data["userIdWhere"] = $userId;
    
    $sqlStatement = "update users set $updateString where userId = :userIdWhere";

    $stmt = $db->prepare($sqlStatement);
    if ($stmt === false) {
        $err = $db->errorInfo();
        trigger_error("Error: {$err[2]} preparing SQL query: $sqlStatement");
        $response = ["response" => 500, "title" => "database error, please report it to the site administrator"];
        return $response;
    }
    
    $ok = $stmt->execute($data);
    if ($ok === false) {
        $err = $stmt->errorInfo();
        trigger_error("Error: {$err[2]} executing SQL query: $sqlStatement");
        $response = ["response" => 500, "title" => "database error, please report it to the site administrator"];
        return $response;
    }

    $response = ["response" => 200, "title" => "update successful"];
    return $response;
}
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