Why were the indigenous peoples in central and south america so much more advanced culturally and technologically than the indigenous peoples of north america around the time of european arrival?

They weren't. The notion of 'technological advancement' is already very iffy, and certainly 'cultural advancement' even moreso. The premise of this question is flawed.

There were immense differences among Indigenous populations in Central and South America as well. There were large sedentary empires like the Mayans, Incans and Aztecs, but there were also hunter gatherers and much smaller scale agriculturalists. To consider one type of polity more 'advanced' than another is essentially just taking the European standard that sedentary agriculture with defined property rights equals 'culturally advanced' at face value. The Spanish found it relatively easy to insert themselves into existing South and Central American imperial political structures, ergo they considered these peoples to be 'more like them' and thus 'more advanced', while those in North America were quite a bit different, ergo 'less advanced'. That's about as much as there is to it.

I would actually say that in terms of many concepts that we value today, many North American Indigenous peoples were more 'advanced' than the Central and South American Indigenous sedentary agricultural empires that the OP likely had in mind when asking this question. Rather than hated tributary empires (Aztecs) or assimilationist ones (Incans), most North American native polities managed to maintain independence from one another. There was no consolidation of power on the level of the Incans or the Aztecs. There was certainly conflict between them and at times even outright genocide, but on a general level, they maintained their independence and were able to continue more egalitarian, communal traditions as a result. They were also skilled agriculturalists, so there are indications that their typically less sedentary way of life was more of a choice or something they were driven to by material circumstances, rather than a sign of less technological or cultural advancement.

This supposed 'technological and cultural inferiority' also worked to their advantage in a huge way. The Spanish were able to conquer the sedentary agricultural empires in Peru and Mexico relatively easily not due to technological advantages but rather because they inserted themselves into local political contexts where newcomers who offered an alternative to the present imperial rulers were able to shake up local politics drastically. They claimed to be representing a powerful monarchy, and to polities in conflict with or dominated by the Aztecs who were already fighting them or looking for a good excuse to do so, this represented an excellent chance to replace the old boss and curry favour from the new one. The situation in Peru was different and similar at the same time; rather than allying with the enemies of the Incans, the Spanish inserted themselves into an ongoing civil war and were able to outmanuever the locals politically, again legitimised entirely by their claim to be representing another monarch who could potentially replace the old one at the top of the hierarchy.

None of this was possible most of the time in North America, due to their very different political structures and much more independent polities. Attempts by the Spanish to form any meaningful settlement in Florida, for example, were hampered by the native's ability to resist and the complete lack of political leverage that the Spanish had there compared to in Peru and Mexico, so they never managed to achieve anything near as substantial there as they had elsewhere. For a dumb, reductive, but fairly accurate way of putting it: 'You represent an important monarch in another continent? Big deal, we don't care.'

The more mobile nature of Native North American societies also made conquering them far more complicated for a number of reasons. European invaders couldn't simply take an important capital city and kill or capture an important leader, and this way of living also meant that they had very different methods of warfare that were far more effective against Europeans. By the time meaningful European incursions in North America had begun, some Native American groups had re-tamed wild horses that had escaped from New Spain and were already adept at using them. So not only was there a lack of a defined, unmovable objective that could be taken and leveraged against them, but they were equals in combat. If it were not for depopulation from disease and rapid population increases in English America that led to them being impossibly outnumbered, they may have been able to resist what became the complete European conquest of North America, due to their relative lack of political weaknesses vs the Central and South American empires, style of warfare, and quick adaptation to the use of horses and firearms.

So, were North American natives less 'culturally or technologically advanced' than those to their south? No, I don't think so. The technology that they had worked very well for them, and culturally they at the very least conformed better with the modern European political values that we often tend to use as a baseline. A big part of why they've historically been considered 'inferior' in this way is simply based on animosity from the fact that their supposedly 'barbaric ways' are exactly what allowed them to resist colonization more effectively and force Europeans to treat them as independent nations for a long time, rather than as colonial subjects.