Growing up US Vs UK

[Mingk]

This is just a random musing I've had. But I wonder how Growing Up and raising children varies between the UK and US.

Are the teenage years significantly different?

We lived in US for a bit but came back before kids were teens. My observation was that kids have more of a childhood in the US - they seem younger for longer if that makes sense?

It will obviously vary by area and we were in a medium sized city in the mid-west which was quite safe and sleepy but our kids had to grow up and toughen up when we came back to the UK.

Just off the top of my head, I think one difference might be that driving and getting a car at 16 (the age in most states for getting a full license) is more common in the US. High Schools have huge parking lots for this reason. Also, happily, no school uniforms (for the most part) in state schools. And the dress code where I live is very relaxed.

I always think the drinking culture is different.

My UK raised kids wouldn't know what to do in an active shooter drill at school.

Yes, very different. We moved to the States when my daughter was 12, so she'd had one year of secondary school in London. It's not the same all over, but where we are the system is elementary, middle, and high school. Middle school is the pits, it's basically the first awkward three years of secondary school but with no older kids to keep things in check.
Meanwhile, the whole education system is entirely different, and the subjects are divided up in a different way, e.g. Language Arts, which is kind of like English except you don't study texts like Shakespeare or Dickens, it's more about communication skills and can include debate and poetry. Then there's Social Sciences which may or may not include history. There is very little history taught formally, as far as I could tell, until college.