Is "I love you" a special or common phrase?

I noticed I was an old-fashion or care too much about the meaning of words? when I heard a bounch of young girls saying to each other "I love you", "Lov' ya",etc. Immediately I felt... mmm you don't know that other girl that much to tell her that special phrase. Since they wouldn't understand me and I had to pop-up the following question:

"Have you thought of what you are going to tell to that REALLY SPECIAL PERSON that you admire, that you care about and that you might want to be the rest of your days?". Sadly with a long silence and then an "okis" answer I didn't know what to think and even worse, how in other words explain it.

This is something I have been thinking in the last 2 weeks and I wanted to share this with everybody and see what other people think about this topic.

Take care and do good!