How not to lose friends and alienate people.

If you worry about how much time you spend checking your phone for social media updates during the rest of the year, you can guarantee that usage will skyrocket over the Christmas period. Being cooped up with your family creates the perfect conditions for the worst of your obsessive-compulsive behaviours to surface. This is generally fuelled by the desire to snoop on what others are doing, and to find out whether they’re coping any better (or worse) than you. In order to safeguard you from yourself and from others, we have put together an easy-to-follow guide on how not to let social media ruin your Christmas, and how not to let your social media ruin Christmas for those who follow you.

Take photos of yourself wearing or using or reading or listening to a gift that someone has given you, and be sure to send the picture to the person in question as a direct message. It shows you appreciate their kindness, and reveals you to be as thoughtful and considerate as they are. That said, it also demonstrates you are too lazy to write a thank-you letter or to pick up the phone.

Take a selfie on Christmas Day surrounded by expensive presents, accompanied by #blessed #thankful. It underlines the obnoxious, shallow person we already knew you were for having an Instagram account that serves as a window onto your rapacious and, frankly, sick-making consumerism.

Share your top 10 albums, books, films and TV series of the year on Facebook. It will stimulate long threads of debate, which will keep you entertained while the rest of your family is either sleeping, arguing or passing wind in an armchair, as well as providing you with valuable suggestions to catch up on over the holiday period and beyond. And let’s face it, anything that isn’t #brexit content is welcome content…

Post quasi-inspirational or motivational quotes on Instagram over Christmas. The words are not yours, and nobody is influenced in any way by your unimaginative recycling of other people’s ideas and mantras. The same applies to New Year’s resolutions. Nobody is remotely interested.

Use Twitter to offer a cynical commentary on the hell of last-minute Christmas shopping. Try, whenever possible, to support your tweets with photos of the tat fellow shoppers are buying, being sure to use #badtaste, #wasteofmoney and #morecashthansense.

Use Twitter to make a completely unfounded report that gunshots have been heard in the shop you are in. Ask Mr Olly Murs, who managed to cause a stampede on Oxford Street in London with one ill-advised tweet. Make the same mistake when stress levels are soaring in the days immediately before Christmas and the only thing you’ll be doing with your social media accounts is closing them down.

Take the time to enjoy your Christmas dinner rather than turning it into a photo shoot for social media. Food shots on Instagram are unfathomably tedious, and never more so than on a day when everyone is eating the same thing.

Take a family portrait of you and your partner/wife/kids in novelty Christmas jumpers, preferably with a department store Santa, and then post it on Christmas morning accompanied by saccharine sentiments about wishing peace and prosperity to the people you love. Everyone knows you’re lying. And this is what Christmas cards are for, anyway.

Remember that however perfect Christmas looks for your friends on Facebook and Instagram, the reality is almost certainly very different. Fantasy: cherubic child holding a large, beautifully wrapped present with a look of heart-melting wonder in their eyes. Reality: tantrums and tears when they discover you’ve bought them something you want them to like rather than the plastic nonsense they’ve been brainwashed by in the adverts on Nickelodeon.

Taunt people with the fantasy. Posting photos of your tanned feet at the end of a sun lounger on what is clearly a tropical beach is smug and deeply annoying, and will cause people to hate you, even your family and closest friends.