Do pixels matter when buying a digital camera?

Yes. It affects the resolution of your photos.

If you're printing your photos, imagine pixels like little dots of colour that make up your image, if you have 2 photos printed at the same size - the one with the higher resolution (ie. more pixels) is going to show more colour variations and will look better.

If you're viewing your photos on a computer, you're not necessarily going to appreciate the difference as much unless you zoom in or crop your photo to only use part of it.

yes

it's the clarity of the pic you take

yes, the more pixels the better the picture comes out to be

Yes. The more pixels the better the picture. This is especially important for pictures of people.

Cameras with a higher MP (mega-pixel) rating have a higher resolution so the picture is clearer, particularily if you are intending on blowing up the image to 8x10 size or larger. If you're printing standard 4x6 size though, there really is no perceptible difference between a 2MP image or a 7MP image.

yes its probably the most important thing.the more pixals the more resolution.the clearer the picture.a pixal is a dot and all pictures are made up of dots...more dots = more definition.

Absolutely. Think of a digital image as a jigsaw puzzle. Each pixel is a puzzle piece. The more pieces the better the quality and bigger image. Also more pixels will result in a larger image file. This means you will need a large/multiple memory cards depending on how many shots you want to take. If you want the quality then its worth the larger files.

no they do not
that is a big myth
alot of people on here complain that their pictures are not clear and part of the reason is due to high mp.
the bigger it is - the more detail you see - and sometimes you really don't need to see that much detail.