Beginner help with pagination

I’ve just started using WordPress recently to start building a blog website, though I’m pretty familiar with HTML, CSS and some JS. I’m developing a custom theme, and on the home page I’d like to display a section with recent posts + navigation- which I’ve figured out how to do with ‘next_posts_link’. My issue is that I have some custom content (shortcode displaying some posts) above the section that contains the recent posts & navigation, but I want this custom content to ONLY display on the front page (ie page 1)- not page 2, 3, etc. Just wondering what the simplest way to achieve this would be.